


Duplicity

by Haley3



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: 2D and 3D creatures together, Angst, Cognitive Dissonance, Fluff, M/M, Parallel Universes, Romance, alternative universe, and some science too, chess references everywhere, flatland references, minor violence because of battles, more violence incoming and graphic descriptions too, sadness and melancholy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-09-16
Packaged: 2019-05-01 20:33:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 57,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14528628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haley3/pseuds/Haley3
Summary: "Duplicity is from a Latin word meaning "twofold, having two parts." Someone who shows duplicity is two-faced — maybe showing one side in public and another in private — or is just a liar, saying something known to be untrue or misleading. A fraud uses duplicity to gain something with false promises, and someone described as "fake" might use duplicity just to fit in or be accepted."(from Vocabulary.com)While traveling the Multiverse, Ford reaches a strange place: a three-dimensional world, inhabitated by two-dimensional creatures, caught up in a long, gruelling civil war. On one side, there are the Circles, tyrants who wants to regain absolute power. On the other side, there are the rebels, who fight for their freedom. The game is already in motion, the pieces are moving.And among them, there is someone Ford knows.





	1. Forced move

> _"The forced move, is a term used in chess game to describe a sequence of moves for which the player has no viable alternative: In these cases the player cannot avoid the loss of a piece or checkmate."_

* * *

 

As he passed the portal, he was welcomed by shots and screams.

Stanford threw himself on the ground and began crawling through the piles of rubble that surrounded him. A burst of gunfire exploded to his right, followed by a shrill familiar scream. It must have been one of the lynx-beings from Dimension 38.

_I couldn’t end up somewhere worse._

Crawling on his forearms, he moved among bricks and gray dust. He had already met one of those beings, in Mineralland: the lynx-creature chased him out of the citadel, into the tangle of subterranean tunnels, with a positron gun in one hand and his wanted poster in the other. It took Ford two days to escape and his right shoulder still burned, where the shot had scratched him.

On the poster it was not specified if he should be captured dead or alive, but the lynx-beings always preferred to be safe and kill their target. The umpteenth obstacle placed by Bill Cipher to make his life harder.

He stopped behind a half-destroyed gray wall and crouched down. The demon's thought brought the bile up in his throat, a ball of anger lit in his chest. He took a couple of deep breaths: he had to calm down, revenge would come in due course. Now the important thing was to survive.

He looked around: no creatures, but no portal either. In the sky above him, red, yellow, green, and black bands twisted in spirals and dispersed in a continuous movement. Neither sun nor moon stood out, there was only a diffused light floating everywhere. Impossible to understand if it was day or night. Not to mention that time could also move differently than normal, as in the Do-Over Dimension. He sighed at the thought. _I hope not_.

More shots fired, this time further away. Whoever was fighting, was getting away from there. Excellent: he had to find a shelter to rest. Once rested, he would search for a portal, crawling to avoid unwanted attention. If he were very lucky, he would also find food and water and would not use his small supplies. But first of all...

"Eeek!"

Ford turned and flinched, with such force that fell backwards. In front of him there was a two-dimensional little thing. A creature...

_Bill!_

No, it was not a Triangle. It was a Pentagon, with a large orange stripe on the surface. His eye was wide open and he held a positron gun in his trembling hands.

"F... Friend or f... f... f-f-foe?"

"Wh... what?" answered Ford, his voice as hoarse as the little thing’s. The orange Pentagon tightened his grip on the weapon.

"Friend or foe?" he shrieked, his voice rising high in the silence.

Ford sat quickly, a raised hand. He turned back, ears straining.

"Ssssh!"

No shots, no scream. Perhaps they were too far away and nobody heard them.

"Answer me," the Pentagon insisted, lowering his tone. He aimed the weapon at Ford’s chest. "Are you with the Circles?"

"The Circles?" Ford raised both hands. "I'm not with anyone. I just arrived."

The Pentagon frowned.

"You aren’t a mercenary?"

"No, I…"

"THEY’RE HERE!"

The lynx-being’s scream exploded very close and made Ford run to the side. He rolled away and the wall behind which he had hidden fell, pierced by a burst of gunfire. He took out his gun, fired and hit a squat creature, with two curved horns. The creature fell to the ground and the lynx-being jumped backward. He raised his weapon: Ford stood up, avoided two shots, fired.

Blood leaked from the leg of the lynx-being, which fell on one knee. The second blow took him to the head and he dropped down dead. Ford panted, put the gun back in his jacket. From far away, he heard other shouts coming: it was time to leave.

Something moved at the edge of his field of vision and immediately his eyes returned on the lynx-being. The small orange Pentagon had approached the creature and taken his weapon, an ionic traction machine gun. It was way bigger than him and the Pentagon could not hold it in his arms, yet he insisted on dragging it into the dust.

With a sigh, Ford approached.

"It's too big for you."

"In fact, I don’t want the machine gun," replied the Pentagon, "I want the ion."

"You can’t take it with your bare hands."

"I know. I'm just bringing the machine gun to our scientist, so he can take the ion and improve my weapon."

Ford sighed again.

"Let me handle this." he got down on one knee, lowering to get closer to the Pentagon. "I've already done twice my weapon’s upgrade from normal ions to positrons."

"Do you know how to make improvements for weapons?" asked the Pentagon. His eye narrowed in a suspicious expression. "Are you a scientist?"

_"The brightest mind this world has ever known!"_

Those familiar words echoed in his mind, accompanied by the ever present acute and piercing laughter. Ford shook his head to get those memories out of his head.

"I'm a scientist," he confirmed. He held out his hand, "May I?"

The Pentagon seemed to think about it, his eye passed from the too heavy weapon, to the hand extended towards him. He closed his eye and sighed.

"Fine." he passed the machine gun. "But away from here. Let's hide there." the Pentagon pointed to a shop with a broken roof. "And don’t try anything funny." he added, while rising his weapon.

Ford took the machine gun and preceded the geometric shape inside the hole. He crawled into the farthest corner, his head brushed against the collapsed boards and the flaps of torn fabric swayed. Stains of color scattered the gray wood, as if someone had thrown them with buckets.

He heard a slight rustle behind him and the Pentagon appeared. The creature dropped a ripped curtain behind him, blocking the only exit. Then he sat down and loaded his weapon, his eye fixed on Ford. He did not trust him completely. _Makes sense_.

Ford sat cross-legged in front of the Pentagon and began to dismantle the machine gun. From his pocket, he took out the maintenance kit purchased on Harmoria and spread it out between them.

"You’re well-stocked." commented the Pentagon.

"I'm on the run," he revealed, "My weapons are always ready."

"On the run from who?"

Ford glanced at the Pentagon and lowered his gaze to the parts of the machine gun. Perhaps that creature had already heard of a triangle so powerful that was feared throughout the Multiverse. But perhaps he may not know anything: after his visit to Exwhylia and the Oracle’s words, he seriously doubted that the Pentagon even had a vague idea of who Bill Cipher was.

He sighed. Of all the billions of Dimensions he had been in, that was the second one that looked like the original Dimension of his worst enemy. At least there, unlike Exwhylia, the inhabitants had not ran into him, tried to stab him and called him irregular.

"From the law." Ford answered, vague. That creature did not know who he was, a sign that the posters with his face had not arrived this far yet. Moreover, that world seemed in enough trouble as it was.

And then on Exwhylia nobody knew who Bill Cipher was. So there was no reason they would know him there.

The Pentagon gave him a bitter half-laugh.

"The law," he repeated, sarcastic. "Be like everyone else. Conform. Obey and be silent. I know that reality too well."

"It’s the same here?" asked Ford, scanning the destroyed shop with a glance.

"It was," replied the Pentagon. "It was an oligarchy divided into classes. The more sides you had, the higher your social rank was. The highest classes didn’t even speak with the lower ones. Polygons with more than six sides were the Aristocracy, all those below the commoners. On the top, the Circles had an absolutist reign over all Shapes." he touched one of his sides. "And if a Shape had a minimum degree of Irregularity... it ended up in prison, or died in a clinic, or lived at the margins of society."

The Pentagon continued to stroke his side. Ford put his hand on the other.

"Are you Irregular?"

"I'm different.” the Pentagon looked him straight in the eye. "My family hated me and I had no friends. They said I was weird."

Weird. Different. Ford squeezed his fingers together.

"I had to become a doctor," he went on, bitterness in his tone. "I studied for a long time, I had fun doing it. My grades were excellent and I had to go to the academy."

_"Have you ever heard of West Coast Tech? The best college in the country."_

"But, in order to participate to the admission test, the Board had to carry out a medical examination. Just to check that all candidates complied the standard government measures." he sighed. "I missed by three millimeters."

_"It was you, Stanley! You did it because you couldn’t bear me going to college alone!"_

"For three millimeters, I was doomed. I didn’t enter the academy and ended up working as the lowest in a factory. My intelligence, my years of study, all lost for three, measly millimeters."

_"I know Backupsmore is not anyone's first choice, but I'm sure your families are proud. More or less."_

"I can understand," Ford admitted in a low voice.

"But everything changed, when the First Ones showed themselves."

Ford lifted his gaze from his fingers: the Pentagon's eye shone with enthusiasm.

"The First Ones?"

"Because they were the first to rebel," he explained. "At the dawn of the rebellion, the First Ones came out and shouted the truth across the nation, openly opposing the tyrannical rule of the Circles. They told everything that no one had ever told us: about other dimensions, about how the division by sides was just a lie, about how everyone deserved his place in the world, up to reveal the true origin of light and color." he laughed. "Before them, this was a very gray and boring world."

Ford smiled in turn. Exwhylia's monotonous and impossible view came back into his mind.

"I can imagine."

"Hundreds of inferior Shapes supported them and died to defend those ideals. The army managed to arrest two of the First Ones, but nothing and no one could stop their voice anymore. More and more rebels joined the cause, even some from the lower Aristocracy as Heptagons and Octagons. Not to mention the Women, even from higher social classes: very few remained among the ranks of the Circles and of those who still support them."

"And that lynx-being?"

“A mercenary." the Pentagon frowned again. "Since when the merging began, the Circles did nothing but buy interdimensional spies to enter our dens and kill as many rebels as possible."

"What merging are you talking about?"

"Merging with neighboring Dimensions." he pointed to the sky. "Do you think our sky has always been like that? That our Dimension was so... three-dimensional even before? These are the effects of our world’s instability. Since the great rebellion began, our universe has expanded and touched the neighboring universes, to merge with them."

Ford scratched his chin.

"An expansion process that started so suddenly?"

"We don’t know for sure. We’ve never studied our universe or others before the rebellion. We’re still trying to figure out whether this expansion has always been there or not," explained the Pentagon. "The fact remains that, with the merging, creatures of other universes found themselves sharing the same world with us. And many were fighting against tyrannical enemies." he raised his hands. "It was easy: rebels allied with us and tyrants with the Circles. On one side, they want to subdue us and restore an absolutist reign again. On the other, we fight for our freedom, to be free to follow our aspirations and do whatever we want, free from stupid rules."

_"I worked so hard for West Coast Tech! If only I could go back..."_

"You fight for a worthy cause." Ford extracted the ion from the lynx-being's weapon and inserted it into the Pentagon's gun.

The Shape watched him, the eye following his every gesture.

"Are you a different too?" he asked.

"I could say that, yes." Ford raised a hand. "In my Dimension, all people have five fingers."

The Pentagon snorted.

"A stupid reason," was his comment, "Worthy of our Circles."

Ford laughed. He reassembled the Pentagon's gun and handed it to him.

“Take it.”

“Wait.” the Pentagon loaded the weapon, looked at the stabilization bar: it was fine. He looked back at Ford. "You're a scientist and a weapon expert. Do you want to work with us?"

"Ehm..." Ford turned around. "I would like to. But I have to go..."

"Where, if you’re on the run?" the Pentagon preceded him. "Your knowledge could change the fate of this war. I've already met other intelligent creatures, but you're special. You understand what it means, to be considered different for a stupid, small detail."

Ford looked at the Pentagon, his eye was a flaming ball of zeal. He looked down at his hands, at the twelve fingers that had been the boulder of his youth. Stan's smug smile reappeared in front of him, the flame of his lighter as he tried to burn his precious Journal.

_If he had let me go to my dream school..._

He looked at the Pentagon. It was a two-dimensional creature, thin as Cipher. But he had just a gun to defend himself from creatures three times bigger than him, armed, with horns and sharp teeth like the lynx-being.

Perhaps his knowledge could really save the lives of those little Shapes.

"All right," he said, "I’ll work with you, if you want."

The Pentagon stood up and held out his hand.

"Come with me," he invited Ford, "I’ll take you to the First Ones."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All chapters' titles and explanations I will put at the beginning are taken from Wikipedia and its glossary of chess terms. I am not an expert, so if there are any mistakes, please tell me.


	2. Discovered attack

> " _In chess, a discovered attack is an attack made by a queen, rook or bishop that is revealed when another piece (or pawn) moves out of its way. Discovered attacks can be extremely powerful, as the piece moved can make a threat independently of the piece it reveals. Like many chess tactics, they succeed because the opponent is unable to meet two threats at once. While typically the consequence of a discovered attack is the gain of material, they do not have to do this to be effective; the tactic can be used merely to gain a tempo."_

* * *

 

The secret base of the leaders of the rebellion was underground.

The Pentagon led him down rows of stairs and through closed doors. Sometimes the rooms narrowed and the ceilings lowered, to the point that Ford had to walk hunched over. For the most part, the ceilings were high enough to allow him to stand upright.

In their descent, they crossed other creatures inside those rooms: geometric shapes well armed, some bipedal creatures with a cat head and a group of bird-beings gathered around a millstone, busy sharpening their spears.

"All weapons are good weapons," explained the Pentagon to Ford, without slowing his pace. “Swords, spears, guns. Of course, the best are ion weapons but we don’t find them very often. Those we have, we took from killed enemies... hey, Linfler!" and nodded to a long, narrow creature, that was dripping blue liquid onto the floor.

"Hey," the creature greeted him, raising an arm. From under the limb, a fan of sharp blades came out. "Did you find anything good?"

"Only an upgrade for my weapon." he raised his gun. "Is there any of the leaders available?”

"Probably. They're all here," replied Linfler.

"All the leaders?!"

"All of them," confirmed. "They’ve gathered in the council room."

"Bad news," remarked the Pentagon. "Thanks for the info. Follow me." he turned to Ford. "Let's go. Maybe they’ve finished."

"Why is this bad news?"

"Because, usually, the First Ones aren't all together in the same place." the Pentagon stopped in front of a closed door. “Last time they gathered was when the former Dimension Varvala merged with ours and the Hergones signed an alliance with the Circles. A dangerous situation for all of us." he knocked twice. "I hope this time isn't something that serious."

The door opened and a thin figure, a Line with a single eye on the top, appeared. Its black shape was brightened by strips of light green, that covered both arms too.

"Hetner," the Line hissed at him with a female voice, "What do you want?"

"Talk to the First Ones," replied the Pentagon, "Or at least one of them."

"They’re in a meeting right now."

"There isn’t anybody available?" he insisted. He held out a hand toward Ford. “I brought a new ally who could be very useful.”

The Line looked at him from head to toe, with a bored eye.

"You can wait." she tried to close the door, but the Pentagon stopped her.

"He's a scientist," he remarked, "He knows how to load and use weapons. He has an ion gun.”

The eye of the Line shone. She looked Ford again, this time more interested.

"Mmmmh..."

"Alea," called a male voice from inside the room, "Who is it?"

The Line opened the door and moved against the wall, like a guard.

"Hetner," she answered. "He brought an ally.”

Another shape appeared on the threshold: it was a Pentagon too, but its surface was entirely covered in purple. His eye narrowed as he checked Ford from head to toe, then curved into a smile.

"Welcome." he held out his hand. "I’m Myr. Did I hear something about a scientist, or am I wrong?"

"Who's back?"

"What's happening?"

Myr glanced to his right. He made a funny movement, as if he were shrugging his shoulders, and backed away. He waved at Ford, inviting him to enter.

"A new ally," he announced.

Ford felt a tap against his leg: the Pentagon Hetner was encouraging him to walk. He took a deep breath, bowed his head, then entered inside the council room.

There was nothing in front of him and to his right. Ford turned to the left and, between the alabaster walls, two things caught his eye.

One was the long table of black wood, its surface covered in papers, with creatures of different shapes and colors seated around it.

The other was the Shape at the center of the table, who stood on his chair, his hands pressed on the table and his arms outstretched. A yellow triangle, with a top hat and a bow tie.

"Bill Cipher," he murmured.

All eyes passed from his face, to Bill Cipher’s, then returned to him. Cipher looked him straight in the eye: his pupil was wide, taken aback by surprise. He blinked and stared at Ford, as if he wanted to get into his mind again - as if he  _could_.

Then, his eye narrowed and Cipher chuckled.

"Apparently, my reputation has come far." he raised a pen and turned it over in his fingers. "What're they saying about me, in the Multiverse? That I’m the leader of the revolution against the Circles? That’s not quite right: everybody here leads the rebellion."

"But you're the most reckless, when it comes to attacks," bickered a Line, seated at the right end of the table. "That one at Base 25 almost got you captured."

Cipher laughed again and the mood relaxed. A couple of Shapes laughed with him, a couple mumbled and rolled their eyes.

"I just did my job as " _great leader_ "," he concluded, sarcastic. He put one foot on the table and leaned forward, an arm raised to caress under the eye. The black pupil was focused again on Ford. "What’s your name, stranger?"

"St... Stanford Pines."

_"Stanford Pines, the man destined to change the world!"_

Bill Cipher collected that information without any sign of recognition.

"Which species are you part of? What’s your race?"

"I’m a human."

"And where are you from?"

"I arrived through a portal." the words unrolled out of his mouth, letter by letter, slowly.

"What’s a portal?" asked Cipher, his eye sharp and interested.

"It’s a... passage that opens between Dimensions." wait, was he really explaining to  _Bill Cipher_  what a portal was?! "In some places, where reality bends more easily..." the words hesitated, for a moment "... you can open a door to a different Dimension. And what's in a Dimension can flow into the other."

The Line before slammed her fists on the table.

" _That’s_  how the Circles got all those mercenaries!" she exclaimed. "They have a system to create portals!"

"How can we stop them?" asked the purple Pentagon, Myr.

"We can build up an attack plan."

"A new attack?" asked a pale orange Triangle, seated at the left end of the table. His eye was surrounded by a web of wrinkles that creased as he bent his eyebrow. "We don’t have enough forces at the moment."

"That's why we're here, Ander," Cipher answered the Triangle, without looking away from Ford. "To get our rebels back."

"But your plan is insane," insisted Ander. "You can’t throw yourself on a rescue mission with only a handful of rebels. That’s true, you aren’t the leader of the rebellion, but for our people you represent the leader. You can’t risk death, to save just a couple of rebels."

Cipher sighed and looked at the other Triangle.

"I've been locked up here for months," he replied. "I can’t always be protected, while you fight for our freedom. I’m a leader as much as you all and I want to fight too." he took his foot off the table and stood up to full height. "For this reason, I’ll attack the Fortress tonight."

Ander gasped in surprise.

"The Fortress?!" he exclaimed, his voice hoarse. "You’ll get killed!"

"Our rebels are inside," said Cipher, tapping one of the maps on the table. "I won’t leave them in the Circles’ hands."

"But you want to enter from the front door!" replied Ander. "They’ll catch you instantly!"

"There’s no other way, to enter."

"There's always another way!"

"Wait... what... what's the plan?" asked Ford.

All the eyes of the leaders focused on him.

"Going through the main gate," answered the Line. "There’s no other way in, only the front door. And our companions are in the dungeons: therefore, we have to enter, fight and try to reach them, making our way through the enemy."

"But that's a suicide plan!" said Ford.

Bill Cipher crossed his arms.

"It's the best plan we have and that's what we'll follow."

"No, it’s not." Ford marched toward the table, staring straight at Cipher. He raised a hand toward the older Triangle. "He's right, there's always another way. What this fortress looks like? Do you have a map?"

"Here." Cipher uncrossed his arms and pointed to the map in front of him. His tone overflowed with sarcasm. "Our enemies are better armed and outnumber us. What do you suggest?"

"Is there really a single entrance?"

"Just one."

Ford drummed his fingers on the edges of the map. The Fortress was perfectly circular, with a single entrance.

"How many people are inside?"

"There are always at least two hundred people, between Circles and their allies."

"How many are the rebels, instead?"

"Not even fifty."

"Weapons?"

"Especially blades. Few guns."

Ford ran the fingers through his hair, thinking.

"We can’t attack them from inside the Fortress," spoke another Shape, a dark red Square with a deep voice. "They know the building much better than us and inside they have all the weapons and ammunition they want."

"Maybe we should wait for the patrol to come back..."

"When it’ll be back, our rebels may already be dead," replied the Line, in her high-pitched voice.

"I think we can do it by ourselves."

Silence fell and all eyes returned on Ford. He straightened up: he met Cipher's gaze firstly, then he moved to look at all the other shapes gathered around the table.

"They’re in an advantageous position and will never go out. But we can deceive them." he swallowed. "Are you familiar with interdimensional chess?"

Various eyes closed and reopened. Ford interpreted it as a sign of assent.

"They’re all locked on their side of the chessboard, to protect their King. They won’t come out to catch other pawns." he rose one hand. "Only a key piece could draw them out."

"The King?" asked Ander, rolling his eye.

Ford lifted his arm towards Bill.

"The Queen," he answered, "The only piece that can move in all directions."

Bill Cipher flickered his eyelashes, surprise and flattery clear in his gaze. He raised an hand and caressed himself under the eye, while the eyelid lowered and his eye bent into an intrigued expression.

"What's your idea?" he asked softly.

"If the Queen can move anywhere, she can also go anywhere." Ford lowered his arm. "And, tonight, she'll be in two places at the same time."

* * *

  
From the Fortress' towers, the ferret-beings were the first to realize that something was different, amid the gray desolation of the destroyed city.

Hidden, silent, compact. Small figures that blended with gray, dust in the dust. Only a small black arm betrayed them and one of the ferret-guards focused on that, until all the sides that made up the figure were identified.

Four. A Square.

But not only that. Besides the Square, other Shapes appeared. Silhouettes with multiple sides, which designated the traitors of the aristocracy. Silhouettes with fewer sides, nothing but pathetic commoners. And the bigger, hated shapes of the bird-creatures, whose colors of plumage were hidden under the dust.

He counted them between his teeth, searching through the rubble. Twenty, more or less. Just a bunch of desperates, who hoped to go unnoticed in the dust, hiding their weapons under the feathers. They would have been captured, as easily as they had taken those in the dungeons.

The guard took the binoculars and kept looking, catching all the small changes in light and color. Twenty bird-beings and perhaps a dozen Shapes.

And then he saw him. He saw the figure at the head of that small group.

It was the golden Triangle. The great leader of the rebellion.

"Call Bestell," he announced, without taking his eyes off the small figure. "Bill Cipher came out of his hiding."

* * *

  
The doors of the Fortress busted open with the sound of a thunder. An army of ferret-beings and horned monsters spilled out like a flood, the raised weapons pointed to the small group of rebels, shots already flying in their direction. Two bird-beings were shot to death, the others drew their spears and threw them toward their enemies.

The gray Shapes hid and flattened, disappearing from sight. The bird-beings dispersed, in a disorganized retreat. One of them put his wings around Cipher, took him and ran away.

"THERE!" shouted one of the Circles, standing on the head of the ferret’s General. "HE’S RUNNING AWAY!"

The army chased the fugitive, more shots were fired in his direction. The bird-creature threw himself down a steep slope, disappearing from sight.

For just a moment, the Circle Bestell held his breath. That idiot of the bird-being had killed himself with Cipher, only to escape them! But, once he reached the top of the slope, he saw that pathetic creature, alive and kicking, trying awkwardly to cross the muddy stream to reach the other side, pushing the water away with a single wing. Bestell exploded in laughter.

It was over.

The ferret-beings flung themselves down the slope, growling with satisfaction, their weapons shining with ionic light. Bestell tightened his grip on the short fur of the ferret’s General and ran down after them.

The pathetic bird-being got struck at the wing and red blood dripped from the wound. He loosened his grip on Cipher, who fell to the ground. While falling, Cipher threw something toward the water.

An ionic core.

Bestell saw the river sparkle with an electrified charge. Then the ionic explosion hit them.

* * *

  
A column of green fire rose twenty meters ahead, its dazzling light filled the halls of the Fortress. The Circles shouted, the ferret-beings called their leaders through the transmitters: no signal answered their curses, no voice. They called the horned monsters and only one answered, the trembling voice echoing in the silent room.

"They ionically charged the water," he explained. "It was unstable. They threw a core and there was a chain reaction. Everyone had weapons that... that reacted."

His voice trailed off in the silence. The Chief Circle was the first to recover composure, standing in all his shape.

"This won’t be forgiven," he ruled. "Now the rebels think they’ve won the battle, that they dealt a blow to our troops. It's not like that and it’ll never be like that. We’re much stronger than them. And we'll show them what happens when our anger breaks out." he turned to one of the ferrets' leaders. "All the prisoners will be executed tonight, as proof of our strength."

The leader of the ferrets-beings bowed his head in a sharp nod and took the transmitter.

"Helbar."

Helbar did not answer. The leader winced and called again.

"Answer immediately, Helbar, or I swear that I’ll come down in person and split you in half!"

"S... sir."

"Who’s that?" he asked.

"Karvat, sir."

"Where’s Helbar?"

"S... sir..." Karvat sobbed, "Helbar and the other guards are all dead."

The transmitter fell from his hand. The leader of the ferret beings flew out of the room and ran down the stairs.

* * *

  
"I wanted to take part in the attack," Bill complained.

"I'm sure Ander was very good impersonating you," Kryptos consoled him. "And I think that, after this time, he won’t show up on the battlefield anymore. He already has many aches, if he tries once again, we'll really have to put him back together..." Kryptos made one of his trembling laughs. "Uh ... was it too harsh?"

"Forget it." Cotter put a hand on his shoulder and Kryptos slowed down, to let the brother take his place next to Bill. "The plan was a success."

"Mh," Bill remarked. He turned to look behind himself, at the line of freed rebels, similar to a small snake, gray on gray, protected on both sides by Semiliquids. Their eyes were bright and smiling, the words floated like feathers, muffled and light even though they were far from the Fortress.

They could have partied, let go the screams and he would have loved it. But " _safety first of all_ " had been the only request of the human when he had presented his plan.

Bill looked again in front of him and his gaze rested on the human. He was at the top of the line, walking beside Ephie. She moved thin and silent as ever, while he advanced cautiously, putting his feet down carefully, a hand touching his side where he held the gun. His eyes were scanning the area.

Those eyes had avoided his all the time, while he explained the plan. They had focused on every member of the council, from Ander to Ephie, making them part of the project. But they had lingered on him only for a short while, just a blink of an eye. He had not even looked at him, when Bill had specifically told the human that would come with him and the rescue team: Stanford Pines had shrugged, as if it made no difference to him. He had not met his gaze even once when they prepared, and their eyes had briefly met only during the action. He had been much more focused on killing the guards as silently as possible and checking the area, as he was doing at that moment.

And even now, as they walked back to the base, he did not set his eyes upon him once.

Bill frowned. When they had looked at each other in the council room, Bill had seen a flame in those eyes, a secret fire that burned fiery and dangerous, controlled behind that stern facade. He thought back of his raised arm, of the words that came out of his lips.

"So, have you decided if he’ll be joining us?"

Bill winced and turned to look at Cotter: the Square had his eye bent into an amused smile, his tone overflowed with irony. He felt his shape grew hotter.

"Of course he’ll be with us," he replied, keeping the tone as neutral as possible. "He’s a scientist and he’s very intelligent. Thanks to him we’ve recovered our rebels and inflicted damage on our enemies. He'll be a good member."

"And this doesn’t have anything to do with him calling you the Queen of the rebellion?" Cotter continued, in the same inquiring tone.

"I've  _always_  been the Queen of the rebellion, from a chess point of view," Bill replied, rolling his eye. "If it wasn’t for me, we wouldn’t even have started. It had to be me to convince you all that it was useless to stay locked in Ander's house and that it would’ve been much better to spread our knowledge to the world."

"Yes," admitted Cotter, more serious. "There are days when I'm grateful for this. Others, in which I would just like to punch you. If we don’t have a family anymore, it's your fault."

"Ephie isn’t mad at me for this. And she lost a father Decagon."

"She still has Leder."

"And you have Kryptos." Bill raised his eyebrow. "Her sister is enough for Ephie and your brother isn’t for you?"

Cotter looked away.

"Kryptos is still a kid. Leder is her older sister."

"So she’s useful while Kryptos isn’t?"

"I can’t stand it when you do that," sighed Cotter. "You put words in my mouth that I didn’t say."

"But you thought them."

"I won’t continue this childish talk," he cut short. "Rather. What will our next move be? The Circles will be furious and ready to kill, no more to take hostages. Our gun stocks are getting smaller and we don’t know how many were lost by the attack group."

"One problem at a time," Bill replied, a lot lighter. "Now let's see how serious the losses were. Then we'll count the weapons we still have and organize a new attack plan."

The base was near. Ephie picked up her pace, accompanied by the human with his long legs. They all sped up and the closer they came, the clearer they saw some Shapes.

"They’re here!"

"They’re arrived!"

"They did it!"

"Leder!" Ephie ran to meet her sister, threw both arms around her and poured a river of words on her. Myr and Hatteras were also on the threshold, both with ion guns ready to use. They lowered the weapons and came to meet them with open arms.

"Everything went fine?"

"Wonderful," answered Cotter with his deep voice, "We're just tired and hungry. A night of rest and we’ll be fine.”

"Come in." Myr stepped aside and they all went inside the base and down the stairs. Finally safe, protected from outside, voices rose up, stories overlapped and laughter exploded. The freed rebels were welcomed by those of the attack group and those who remained to protect the stronghold: they embraced, laughed and cheered together.

Bill saw Ander and Featherlight, one of the chiefs of the bird-beings, coming towards him. Featherlight’s wing and his whole torso were bandaged, but he smiled while carrying Ander with the good wing. The old Triangle, for his part, seemed to be frowning less than usual, despite the bandage that surrounded his base. He had cleaned himself from the yellow color and his shape was orange again.

"Never again," he announced. "I won’t impersonate you again, Bill. I'm too old for these things."

Bill sighed, amused.

"You're complaining too much, so you're fine." he turned to Featherlight. "Everything went good?"

"For a moment, I thought we would've had a close call," replied the bird-being, laughing. "I caught Ander just in time and we hid in the ditch, just when the core exploded."

"And why the bandage?"

"We fell sideways in the hole and my back got burned a little," he laughed. "Nothin’ that some rest won’t heal."

"Were there many losses?"

"Four of ours." Featherlight grinned. "At least a hundred of them."

Bill sighed and felt lighter than before. They rescued their comrades and inflicted great damage on the enemy, all in one evening! Featherlight, despite the bandage, seemed ready to party and even the others were already flowing towards the common room, chatting and laughing, happy for the victory.

Bill started to follow Cotter, when his gaze caught something dark. The human Stanford Pines stood in a corner, watching the others flow toward the common room, wrapped in his black jacket, with the dark scarf pulled to hide his chin. His eyes were veiled with melancholy as he stood there, leaning wearily against a column.

"Human," Bill called him. Stanford Pines straightened up, their eyes met and he stood still, waiting. Bill pointed to the council room. "Just a word."

The man followed him inside.

"Close the door. Just two minutes in private."

He heard the door close, got up on the chair and sat down on the table. He looked up: the human was still near the door, at least two meters to separate them. His eyes looked at something to the right, apparently interested in the white walls of the room.

Bill crossed his legs. That elusive look again.

"Stanford Pines," he spelled, "Your plan saved many lives tonight."

The human shrugged, his gaze focused on the ground.

"I'm not a military specialist," he began, his voice veiled with shyness, "But I’m a man of science. I used what I knew."

"You know a lot," remarked Bill, "You have extensive knowledge. You're a scientist and an intellectual." he stared at him from under the eyelashes. "And you know interdimensional chess."

The human’s eyes remained focused on the ground, his hands clenched in two fists.

"Yes." was the only laconic answer.

"Your knowledge can do a lot, here." Bill leaned forward. "If you stay here and help us, this war will finish earlier. We need fighters, but first of all we’re intellectuals: with knowledge we started this war and with knowledge we’ll win it."

The human raised his eyes and, at the bottom of his black pupils, Bill caught the secret flame again. A beat of eyelashes and he looked back at the ground.

"I’ll stay," he finally said, with a melancholy tone. "For now."

And, without adding anything else, he left the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's be real, people. Who thought Bill would be JUST a rebel? *Of course* Bill Cipher was supposed to be among the leaders of the rebellion, if not the *main* leader. It's still Bill, even from a different Dimension XD
> 
> Anyway, hope you enjoyed this chapter and if there is any mistake please let me know.


	3. Compensation

> _"In chess, compensation indicates what is gained, in return for a sacrifice or some other action.”_

* * *

 

"Losses have been smaller than we could ever have hoped for: four dead to get back fifty fighters is a great result. You can be very proud of this."

Hatteras the Hexagon lowered his papers and made a polite wave of his hand towards Stanford, as a sign of gratitude. All other leaders clapped in his way: the bird-beings nodded, while Semiliquids simply beat their eyelashes, their translucent surface moving in pleasant waves.

Even if he was not looking directly at him, out of the corner of his eye, Stanford saw Bill Cipher clapping his hands in a slow applause. His eye was once again focused on him. He felt the Triangle’s interest touch him, sneak into the folds of his jacket. Stanford nodded at everyone and flattened himself against the chair, leaving only his gaze to trail along the stone walls of the common room.

There were a lot more chairs and clear space in that chamber, than in the white council room. Benches allowed larger creatures to sit down comfortably and the long tables were occupied by documents, weapons and, in that case, by Hatteras, who stood on a table in order to be seen by everyone.

"Instead our gun stocks are smaller than ever," the Hexagon spoke again. "We had to draw on 70% of our total ammunition for the river trap. Fortunately, the reaction was successful, otherwise we would’ve lost at least half the stocks. We still have many spears and daggers, but we fight more and more frequently on the long distance: enemies are better armed than us and prefer to hit from afar, because they know we would prevail on a closer distance." and Hatteras gave a polite look to Ephie and Leder, the two Lines members of the First Ones.

"We need to supply ourselves with long-range weapons," he continued, "And our informers...” another wave of the hand toward two Semiliquids."... warned us that ferret-beings are getting new boosted weapons from the southern territories. If we get organized, we can intercept and divert the cargo to us."

"We can do it." Ephie stood up. "Ten Lines: they won’t even see us and we could make a massacre."

"Lynx mercenaries have fine ears," intervened one of the Semiliquids. His voice seemed to echo through his wave-like structure. "Losing ten Lines would be a serious blow to us."

"Ember’s right." Hatteras looked at each leader. "Do we really want to risk ten of our best killers?"

"Do we have another choice?" Ephie asked, "If we don’t risk, we’ll never have weapons."

"Ephie is right." Cipher supported her. "We can still loot the enemies we defeat, but they would always be too few. We need a lot more weapons."

The Pentagon Myr stood up.

"I'll go with them," he declared.

"We too," spoke the two Semiliquid informers, their translucent skin still half covered by the gray dust of the surface.

"Me and five of my fighters will follow you in the rear, so if something goes wrong, we're there," said one of the leaders of the bird-creatures.

Stanford stood up.

"I'll come too," he announced. "I'm one of the few who's still armed. If there are problems, I can shoot from afar."

"It's settled." Ephie turned and, following the direction of her gaze, Stanford met Cipher's eye: he blinked and looked away from the Triangle.

"Fine," Cipher agreed, and the leaders stood up one by one.

* * *

 

The trench was dug deep enough to allow even larger creatures such as bird-beings - and him - to crouch down comfortably. He was amazed at how well they could always find the way to talk and settle down, despite sharing space with creatures tall more or less thirty centimeters. But war required this and more.

Stanford pulled out his gun and charged it again, bored. Semiliquids were on the move and no news had yet arrived. Half of the Lines stood out of the shelter, camouflaged with the gray landscape, waiting.

"It’ll be a long wait." Ephie sat down next to him and turned to look at his face. "You can relax."

Ford tightened his grip on the weapon. Never relax, never lower your guard. Lowering his guard had made him end more than once in the hands of mercenaries, interested in collecting his bounty. Lowering his guard had almost allowed Bill Cipher to take possession of his world.

_Don’t trust anyone._

"I prefer not."

"I mean in general," she corrected him. "You don’t have to be so tense. You're one of us now."

"Because of the plan or because Bill Cipher said so?"

"He may have the last word, but it doesn’t mean he can decide for himself." the Line gave him a glance, piercing and icy. "If the majority decides something he doesn’t like, we do what the majority wants." she half-closed her eye. "The Queen alone can’t win any game."

Silence returned between them. Ford lowered his gun and looked up at the sky that was swirling with colours.

"Do you know what time it is?"

Ephie looked up too.

"I would say four o'clock in the afternoon."

"And how do you know?"

She looked at him as if he were stupid.

"I've been seeing this sky for years. By now I’ve learned to recognize how light changes."

Ford gave her a slight nod of apology. She ignored him and looked up again.

"Once it was easier," she said. "Light came and light went. Day and night. Black and white." her tone was sad, rough like dust.

"Weren’t you happy?"

Ephie stood still, looking at the sky. Slowly, she closed her eye and a silent laugh ran along her entire shape.

"Who wouldn’t been, in my place?" she asked, a question addressed to no one in particular. "My father was a Decagon. I was part of the aristocracy. The dream of every Line, from nine sides or under."

"But not yours?"

"Yeah," she answered, a smile in her tone of voice. "I was a noble, but also a Woman. I could read, but not study. I could assist, but not take part." she shrugged. "At the end of the day, between me and a commoner the only difference was that I could steal my father's books and study in secret." she smiled. "From this point of view, war improved my life: at least now I can study everywhere and I don’t have to hide anymore."

Ford put both arms on his raised knees.

"Did your parents support you?"

Ephie laughed bitterly.

"A Decagon would never give up his social rank, to believe in the Three Dimensions," she answered, as if it were obvious, "He didn’t even know that Leder and I were studying advanced mathematics and physics. He believed that we spent all day embroidering and chatting with other women. We had to run away from home, before the army came looking for us."

"What happened to them?"

"Dead," she admitted, the smile disappeared from her tone. “The soldiers didn’t believe them, when they said they didn’t know where we were. Our families were the first to be destroyed by war. And the two of us have been lucky: those who had worse odds are the families on the border between aristocracy and common Shapes.”

Her eye moved to a farthest figure, at the end of the trench: Ford followed her gaze and saw Myr's purple shape, focused on scanning the horizon.

"Myr had a wife and two children," Ephie told him, "For a rule of nature, the children of a Polygon always have one more side of his parents: so his children were Hexagons and were admitted within the aristocracy. When we spread the truth about the Three Dimensions, his sons weren’t willing to give up their privileges, so they disowned and denounced him."

" _His sons_ did that?"

" " _Honour the son and even more the grandson_ ", " recited Ephie, "That was how it worked in this world. So Myr was arrested and ended up in jail. Hatteras met the same fate: his Heptagons sons, the Octagon grandson and his wife reported him together and took also part in the war, by fighting against him," she sighed, "But this didn’t just happen to us. Every single Shape lost part of its family: former aristocrats who joined us lost all their relatives, common Shapes lost at least one of their loved ones during fights. Hundreds betrayed each other and died."

"And Cipher?"

The question escaped his lips and floated between them, before Ford realized what he had asked. He swallowed and looked away, nonchalantly.

"He was luckier than many others."

Ford turned to look at her: her eye was smiling, a smile as cold as her tone, as the mint colour she had chosen for herself.

"What do you mean?"

"His parents died long before the announcement," she replied, "His father of old age, his mother of broken heart. He had been an orphan for two years, before the war began."

Ford looked away from her and pointed his gaze to the sky. He would have expected to feel enthusiastic for receiving that information, focused, amazed. He would even accepted to feel sad. Instead he felt only empty.

"What did _you_ lose?"

Ford lowered his head. Ephie was staring at him.

He thought back of Gravity Falls, of his home elected as a temple for study and research, of the portal. F's shocked expression before leaving the project, Stanley's frown as he slammed the Journal against his chest.

"My world."

Ephie made again that kind of bitter sigh-laugh.

"I didn’t think we could be luckier than someone else."

* * *

 

The attack went smoothly.

Women, camouflaged in the gray of the dust, rose up like blades and like blades pierced the flesh of the lynx-beings. Semiliquids finished the job, stifling the last few screams of those who survived the lethal stabs.

Within a couple of minutes, the load was hijacked and rushed to its new destination, pushed to full force by bird-beings and Stanford Pines, who ran to keep up with the allies much more trained than him.

Many other bird-beings waited outside the base. The weapons were taken under their big wings, the wagon was destroyed and everyone withdrew underground, in a chaos of feathers, cold liquid, arms, legs, angles, voices that swarmed en masse towards the common room, where others rebels waited and Bill Cipher himself greeted them.

Weapons were distributed, voices rose again. Someone drank, others sang, others loaded their new weapons. Little by little, that gathering took more and more the appearance of a party and Stanford retired next to one of the walls. He let himself slide down, sat on the ground and put his arms on both knees. The adrenaline of the battle had disappeared, leaving only fatigue. He wanted to leave, lie down and sleep, but he could not even get up.

And he liked to watch that joy, see those smiles, watch the Shapes speak together, contemplating their new weapons.

"For you."

Bill Cipher appeared before him, one arm raised. In his hand there was a gun and he held the grip towards him.

_Speaking of weapons._

Ford looked away from his eye.

"I already have mine."

"You cooperated with us during the operation," Cipher insisted. "They all got a weapon. You too deserve a prize."

Ford shook his head.

"There are still unarmed fighters," he replied. "They need it more than me. I already have a weapon.”

Cipher lowered his arm. Ford saw his golden shape move, he heard the gun touch the ground and Cipher sat down next to him.

"You aren’t a party type, mh?"

_"When the portal is open, then we'll put on a real party!"_

The words - distant, old, fresh - burned his skin. He took a deep breath to calm down.

"I never liked them."

"Too bad, at parties people know each other better." Ford felt his eye on him, burning with curiosity. Hungry to know.

"I don’t like parties," he repeated.

"How about studying, instead?" asked Cipher "Math, perhaps? O physics?"

"Both," he admitted.

"Multiversal chemistry?"

“I... didn’t know existed.”

"We’ve been studying that for years, thanks to our allies," he explained. "We want to create a theory that explains the expansion of our Dimension and can foresee the subsequent mergers with the Dimensions nearby."

Fusion of Dimensions? Butterfly wings caressed his heart, theories and formulas swirled in his mind. Did they already have ideas? Did they theorize something?

"At the moment we’re a little short on data," continued Cipher, "Thus, you would come in handy for us if, for a few days, you could stay after meetings and talk to us about what you know about Multiverse and portals."

Ford shrugged, quick, defensively. It was not information he could give, not to Cipher... and yet the thought of studying again on books, discussing, writing formulas and talking to people who understood the language of mathematics... his heart was thumping hard.

“I can,” he answered, cautiously, "But I don’t think it’ll help you."

"Each grain of information can be useful," Cipher replied. "Without data, we can’t go ahead."

 _Without observation, we can’t reach a result_. The scientific method never changed its principles, even in the unstable world of Bill Cipher.

"I’m glad we found another scientist," Cipher revealed to him. "An extra mind makes the knowledge of all others grow."

_"We need fighters, but first of all we’re intellectuals."_

And he was too, before joining them. Before being a fugitive, a wanted man. And the mere thought was enough to warm his chest.


	4. Opposite-colored bishops endgame

_"The opposite-colored bishops endgame is a chess endgame in which each side has a single bishop, but the bishops reside on opposite-colored squares on the chessboard, thus cannot attack or block each other.”_

* * *

 

The Circles’ revenge did not take long to strike.

They organized new attacks, more decisive and violent than before. Lynx-mercenaries were more and more present, their speed allowed them to kill before the rebels could even see them. Ferret-beings and horned monsters surrounded the fragile Shapes, taking advantage of the numeric majority. And finally, Circles gave them the final blow.

Stanford scratched his head. Although with fewer weapons, the circular forces still remained better armed than the rebel groups. They could count on Semiliquids, which were able to change their state, vanish into liquid and then suddenly reform themselves behind the enemy; Lines, who were the best in mimicry and bird-beings, who had hidden blades literally everywhere. But it was not enough against the enemy.

With the river ambush, Ford believed he has inflicted great damage on the Circles. Instead, with each new confrontation, it was increasingly evident that it had not been so. The enemy's forces were still larger than theirs. And if the enemy could afford to lose twenty fighters, each of their dead was much more difficult to replace.

This worried the leaders of the rebellion, the First Ones, as they had been called. The first to rebel, the first to start that endless war. In their eyes there was the weight of those lives, the worry about _how_ to use them, _when_ to use them, _how_ to direct them.

And sat in the middle, focused on papers, there was Bill Cipher. His eye was restless, full of informations, but hungry for other details that could help him come up with a plan. it had been hours that he was mulling over the same news, welcoming every creature who entered the council room by pointing his pupil on it, as if he wanted to grasp the information directly from its brain. His eye was agitated, eager, burning. It was the eye that Ford knew too well.

At the same time, in that eye there was also something he had never seen. There was concern, real concern for the lives that depended on him. There was fear, because that eye did not know everything. That eye was not omniscient and did not know how the fight would end, who would die, who would win.

Bill Cipher was relaxed in his infinite knowledge. But _this_ Bill Cipher did not know everything and clung to every bit of information with eager fury.

_First intellectual, then fighter._

"I totally disagree with this idea," admitted Ander, after a full hour of discussion, "But it's the best plan we have."

"I still don’t agree." a dark red Square (Cotter, he said his name was) crossed his arms. "Women are our best killers. Maybe other fighters can be replaced, but if _they_ die, well, _they_ can’t be replaced."

"My group is restless and wants to fight," Leder insisted. "And you know that I keep my word: if I say that there will be no losses on our part, there won’t be."

Ford glanced at Cipher, waiting for his reaction: the Triangle kept running his hands over the papers, looking for an answer, a better plan.

"The Lines will be enough for the advance team." Featherlight, one of the leaders of the bird-beings, lifted the wing revealing a fan of blades. "Then they’ll have to deal with me and my fighters."

A figure rose from the table: it was an Octagon, the highest ranking Shape that Ford had seen among the Leaders. Of course, there were also other Heptagons, Octagons and even Decagons, but among simple fighters. Instead that Octagon was always present during the councils, even if he did not speak much. His shape was covered with a rich emerald green.

"I will go too," he said, revealing a voice as soft and deep as his color.

A group of Lines, an Octagon and a pair of bird-beings, against at least twice as many enemies. They needed other prepared fighters.

Ford straightened on his chair.

"So will I."

"No you won’t."

Ford blinked, caught off guard: the Octagon was looking at him. The last thing he expected, was that that silent Shape, always keeping to himself, would suddenly oppose him for no reason.

"But I..."

"Don’t risk your life for a mission like that," replied the Octagon. He did not have the dry tone of Cipher or Ephie, who convinced by insisting. That was a tone that pressed, which required respect. A gentleman's tone. The voice of an adult. Perhaps, even of his own age.

"I'm a fighter too, and the more we are, the more chances we have of winning," Ford insisted.

"You're not just a fighter," the Octagon replied. "You're also a scientist and a scholar. Isn’t that right?"

"Well... yes…"

"Then you're more precious than a normal fighter. Stay here and share your information."

Ford closed his mouth, dropped his shoulders. That firm tone made him feel like a child again, sitting in the kitchen chair, with his father's hand on his shoulder.

_"I didn’t pay you those boxing lessons, so that you can skip them. You always study everything, study that too."_

“It’ll be the three of us leading the group: Me, Leder and Featherlight," continued the Octagon. "Are we all agreed?"

Ander shrugged, resigned. Ephie lowered her eye. Cotter frowned. Cipher just sighed. The others expressed their consent in a low murmur and the session closed, the Shapes stood up and came out. Leder and Featherlight went straight to the common area to recruit those who would come with them, while the Octagon was stopped by Cotter, who touched his arm.

"Don’t be reckless," he said.

The Octagon closed the eye in recognition and went out. Ford got up and followed him.

"Uhm... James?"

The Octagon turned.

"I really want to help you all." Ford leaned on one knee, to get closer to his height. "You’re too few, there will be losses..."

The Octagon put a hand on his wrist and that touch shut down the words in his throat. It was a firm, solid touch, as much as his father's hand.

"Don’t worry," he replied, calm and stable. "There’s nothing left for me to lose. You, on the other hand, still have something to live for."

And, with nothing further being said, he turned and left.

* * *

 

 

Hours flowed, while waiting.

Ephie went back and forth through the base, from the infirmary to the common rooms, until she went on the surface and came back inside, to start her tour again. She stopped at every voice that called her, to every rebel she met. Ford had heard her speak in different tones, ask how things were going, if something was missing, if relatives were fine. She listened, laughed, frowned if the conversation was serious, promised to do something, a handshake and off she was again. She seemed animated by infinite energy.

"How many times did she come through here?"

Ford turned to his right: Bill Cipher was again sitting on the ground next to him, leaning against the wall of the common room. Ephie was two meters ahead, talking to a Semiliquid who was telling her about his younger brother. Ephie laughed, her big eye very focused.

"At least three," said Ford. "I didn’t think she was so energetic."

"She acts like that every time Leder leaves for some dangerous mission," Cipher replied. "She always let her go, never insists on going with her. But she worries and, because she doesn’t want to show it, she keeps herself busy in every way possible."

The Semiliquid went away and Ephie flew to two bird-beings who were chatting, sitting at one of the tables. She sat down with them and they welcomed her into their conversation. From one of the opposite arches, Cotter entered with his brother Kryptos, one in dark red, the other in blue.

The memory about the extended council of that morning came back to Ford’s mind, and how the Square had opposed to the plan. With that, came back also the memory of James, the emerald green Octagon who had volunteered to participate. On his wrist he still felt an echo of his touch.

_"There’s nothing left for me to lose."_

"Something wrong?" asked Cipher.

Ford realized was touching his wrist with the fingers. He lowered both arms and looked in front of him again.

"Nothing."

"You can open up, you know?" Cipher insisted. "If you talk to someone, it’ll help you clear your mind."

_Yes, and opening up to you has almost lead to the end of my world._

Ford held his tongue. This Cipher did not know him. Ford remembered his eye focused on the papers, looking for new information to come up with a better plan. Perhaps he was expressing what he himself would have liked: someone to talk to, to clear his mind and work out the plan that would make them win.

"I thought of James," Ford said. "When we left the room after the meeting, he told me that he had nothing left to lose. Is that why he wanted to join the attack?" he looked at Cipher "Is he looking for a way to die?"

"More or less."

"Is it because he lost his family, by allying with you? But if he misses them so much, why he doesn’t come back to them?"

"James would _never_ do it," answered Cipher. "He and Ander created our club and shared the knowledge with us. When we decided to reveal everything, James was among the most active, along with me and Ephie. He did propaganda inside his own house, to the point of convincing his wife and father to come over to our side."

"Did he lose them in battle?"

"He lost them against his _son_ ," Cipher corrected him. "He has never been persuaded. He tried to get James arrested countless times, sent some spies after him and set fire to Ander's house, just to lure us out." he laughed. "He's a real asshole and James is an idiot because he still loves him."

" "Honour your son"? "

"It’s not for that nonsense." Cipher rolled his eye. "James just adores him, because he almost died when was born and instead he got away. Hatteras and Myr fought against their sons, but James never tries to do it. But every time we organize a fight and there’s the chance that his son will be there, he wants to join."

"He hopes to convince his son to get on his side?"

"He doesn’t hope that anymore, he's not that stupid. He just wants to see his son and wants his son to see him. He knows that only two things can happen: either he dies by the hands of his son, or his son dies during the fight. If he has to die, he wants his son to kill him and if his son dies, he wants to be there." Cipher shrugged, a disgusted expression curved his eyebrow. "This stupid attachment will make him the first of us to be killed. Even Kryptos, who never fights, survived until now, while James throws himself into every battle trying to die."

"Why don’t you stop him, if he's so important to you and the rebellion?"

Cipher looked at him sideways.

"The Queen can’t stop the pieces from taking action," he answered, "She can only try to control the game and direct them."

He remembered the silent assent of the council at James’ words, how Cotter just touched his arm and say a few words, before letting him go.

_"Don’t be reckless."_

_"There’s nothing left for me to lose. You, on the other hand, still have something to live for."_

Ford had believed he was like James. There was nothing left for him too: he had lost his world, his previous life, his home, his hard work. Revenge was all that he had left. What was the point of not travelling between Dimensions, not seeing anything, not looking around, if the rest of his life was devoted to the sole purpose of killing Bill Cipher, anyway?

And so he might as well stop travelling and enjoy what was there. Reign in the Finger Dimension. Travel along the caravan routes of the Sandy Dimension. Dine under the stars with the inhabitants of Pedasion 20, play and cheat on Lottocron Nine, fight with the rebels of Rodenthus first and with these rebels now. He accumulated experience and knowledge, as he began to work out the final weapon to kill the demon.

_Still something to live for._

Perhaps, after all, James was right. As his father had been right that afternoon, telling him to “study” his boxing lessons. Maybe he still had something else to live for, besides revenge. He had the knowledge of the Multiverse, which flowed around him like sand in the wind, every time he jumped from one Dimension to another. He still had experiences to do, places to see, creatures to study.

And he had a world to save, in which lived a brother he would never see again. Foolish, stupid, reckless, but at least he would have kept living.

"It worked."

Ford shook himself out of his thoughts: Bill Cipher was looking at him, his eye curved into a smile. For a moment, the question hesitated on his lips (" _What worked?_ "), then he remembered.

_"If you talk to someone, it'll help you clear your mind."_

"Yes," he replied, looking away, "That’s better."

"THEY’RE BACK!"

Ford lifted his head, surprised by Ephie's excited scream. Cipher, who had a hand raised towards his arm, lowered it and stood up. He moved swiftly to the arch from which the shout came. Ford followed him, along with the few rebels in the room. Other curious rebels entered from other arches, heading to the source of all that noise.

The first to arrive were the Lines of Leder’s group. Ford counted them quickly: twenty-three, all alive. A sigh escaped his lips and he felt lighter. Behind them, the bird-beings led by Featherlight.

_The Leaders of the Shapes are missing._

Ford had just time to organize that thought, that Ephie entered the room. Behind her, Leder and James. Leder had one hand on the Octagon's arm.

"What's going on?" asked Cipher.

"The plan succeeded," Featherlight announced.

"But?"

"But nothing." James took a step forward, freeing himself from Leder’s hand. "Enemies were all killed."

"Kaspar was there?"

James's composure cracked, his eye trembled.

"He was leading the group," he answered, his voice steady despite the tremor in his eye. "No one survived."

"I... I didn’t recognize him." Featherlight looked from James to Cipher. "I hit. Only then I realized what..."

"That’s all right, my friend." James raised his hand, his voice calm. "I knew this would happen and I’m glad it was you."

"James!" Ander came running, panting and limping. He looked at the Octagon. "Pal..."

As if his presence opened a dam, James clung to the old Triangle and burst into tears, collapsing on his knees.

Most of the rebels moved away in sign of respect, giving them space. Leder took a few steps back and stood there, just outside. Ephie remained behind her.

Ford felt a touch on his arm, feathers tickling the back of his hand.

"Let’s go," Featherlight whispered.

Ford walked away with the bird-being. The only ones to stay were the First Ones, standing around Ander and James like planets in a motionless solar system that had in its center the two Shapes, the emerald green noble and the pale orange commoner.

Bill Cipher was in one of the outer rings, absolutely still, both arms down his sides. Even though he could only see his back, Ford imagined his eye on the two Shapes, serious and focused, exactly as it had been that same morning during the meeting.

He turned and followed Featherlight out of the room.


	5. Development

> _“In chess, development is the movement of non-pawn pieces from their original squares to squares where they can be more active.”_

* * *

 

"Would you like to tell us something about the structure of the Multiverse?"

The meeting was over. Myr got up first, as usual, jumping from his chair as if it had thorns that could pierce his shape. The other leaders were chatting, Shapes and Semiliquids together. Leder was gathering the scattered papers and Cipher was relaxing against his chair, his arms crossed behind the top.

Ander's words took Ford by surprise. He had thought of going for a walk around the base, exploring it, maybe even seeing the surrounding area. But that very casual question had not a questioning tone at all. And it did not have even the appearance of something asked casually: all the leaders reacted by diverting their attention to him, everyone widened their eyes, waiting.

Everyone except Cipher, who still sat against his chair and just looked at him sideways. It was incredible how, even without having a mouth, Ford could still catch the inflections of a smile in his eye.

"If you're interested," said Ford, cautiously. Myr climbed back into his chair, Ephie’s whole shape seemed to shine with curiosity, Kryptos leaned forward and Cipher lowered his arms. The three leaders of the Semiliquids sat down again on their chairs, like obedient students.

Ford cleared his throat, feeling more and more like a professor in front of a class. The only difference was he did not know if they were young people with a slight smattering of science or already experienced university students. They knew something, but how much did they _actually_ knew?

Ford took a breath and began to test the waters.

* * *

 

They knew a lot, but with a different language.

It was always the language of mathematics: the eternal, multiversal language that Ford had already met in many other Dimensions. What changed was their use, the way they wrote formulas, how they came to intuitions, using different terms for the same result.

They knew energy and mass were equivalent, but they did not create the same formula as Einstein. They understood atoms were the basis of everything and that they were made up of smaller elements. For Ford those elements had always been represented as infinitesimal spheres, for them they were points, millions of microscopic points that joined from the First Dimension to form the Second, the Third and all the others.

They knew the Multiverse was made up of worlds that were very far apart and, they supposed, adrift, since their Dimension had hit worlds that had never crossed before, until they had both merged into one.

"We suppose this drifting is impossible to calculate, at least with the tools we have now," Ephie explained, "And we have estimated that, with each contact, something changes in the very structure of our Dimension."

"With the first contact, we passed from the Second to the Third Dimension," Leder continued her sister’s speech. "With the second contact, the atmosphere was filled with many more elements that made breathing easier for all the beings who live there. With the third contact, the physical structure began to change and the sky is the most obvious example. Finally, with the fourth contact we think that our world is slowing down."

"What makes you think that?"

"Light changes slower than before," Leder explained. "In the previous years, day and night alternated with great speed. Now days have become longer and more regular. And it's not a seasonal thing," she added, anticipating the question Ford had already on his tongue. "It’s been two years we have days of twenty hours and nights of twenty hours."

"It could be that you’re moving away from your star. Or maybe dimensional merging has led your planet to create a bigger orbit."

"There were no climate changes compared to before."

"This star-thing," asked Ander, "Is valid for all three-dimensional worlds?"

"Not all of them," admitted Ford, "There are Dimensions in which planets could sustain themselves, even if adrift. One of them was able to generate heat directly from the inside: so even if it was surrounded by nothing, life was still there."

"And it couldn’t be our case?"

"We would’ve had underground sources of heat coming out on the surface," Leder contradicted him, tapping a pen on the table. "Instead our Dimension has always been flat and regular."

"What if the star wasn’t a star, but one of those pulsars?" Cotter suggested, turning to look at Ford. "The light emitted in our direction might change according to the period, explaining why days are longer now than two years ago.”

"That’s possible."

"I think it's more likely that the star itself changed."

"What if it were like for bird-beings?"

Ford rested both hands on his knees. He sat cross-legged on one side of the table and Shapes were in front of him, while the Semiliquids were still sat in their chairs and kept taking notes.

The council room was filled with Shapes’ voices. They discussed and exchanged theories, laughing and nudging each other. It was pleasant to see them all together on the table, sat among the papers, colorful and enthusiastic, from Ephie with her sparkling energy, to the quiet James, to Ander who preferred to think rather than talk, to Cipher who enjoyed jumping from one theory to another.

It was like being back at the university. Only, with many more intellectuals.

"But if we respect the Theorem of the Existence of Light..." Ephie transcribed a formula on a sheet. "It’s not possible, Bill."

"Neither it was changing from two to three dimensions," Cipher replied. "Maybe we’re really changing natural laws."

"I don’t know if it’s actually possible." said Ford, raising his hands "I never heard of other Dimensions that have merged. But it’s also true that the Multiverse is infinite, so I suppose there are others I don’t know about that could’ve started the same process."

"We’re not thinking about the important thing," intervened James with his calm voice. "These changes take place at the punctual level... wait, how did you call them?" he added, glancing at Ford. "Quark?"

"Quark." confirmed.

"So if quarks of our Dimension changed, is it possible that _we ourselves_ will change too?”

Ephie let out a euphoric _gasp_.

"We could develop _wings,_ ” she said with reverence and a gleaming eye.

"No, thank you." Myr touched his shape with both hands. "I’d rather stay as I am."

"We know you're vain, you don’t need to remind us."

"Says Bill, the vainest Shape."

"There may be fatal consequences and I’d rather stay alive." Ander took a pen. "If we calculate the amount of trilonium in the atmosphere and compare it with the percentage in our structure, we see that for now they’re too different and it’s missing the magnetosine that’s in the Multiverse. How did you call it, Ford?"

Ford opened his mouth to reply, but his words were covered by an insistent knock on the door.

Cipher complained with an huff. Ander threw him a pen and gave him a warning look.

"It's open," he said, turning to the door. "No need to knock."

A Line entered from the half-open door. Her shape was covered with bands of the same mint green of Ephie and she held a gun in her hand.

"The spies came back from the north," she said, breathlessly.

All Shapes straightened up, their eyes focused. Cipher stood up.

"Take them in, one at a time."

The Semiliquids stood up and hurriedly withdrew their papers, while the Shapes returned to sit on the chairs. One of the beings with a lilac surface made a gesture to Ford.

_Get out?_

Ford got off the table and followed the Semiliquid. A group of five cat-faced creatures crossed the threshold: some were armed, others were limping. One stepped forward to enter: half of his face was bandaged.

_Bad news._

The last thing he saw was the Leaders of the Shapes sitting around the table, their eyes focused on the newcomer. Then the door was closed.

"Let’s go," said a blue Semiliquid - Willar, if he remembered his name right.

"Why did we have to go out?" Ford asked. "We always stay."

"This is a serious matter," said the small Line with green bands. "The spies give information always and only to the First Ones."

"Not even the other leaders can hear?"

"Of course not." the Line turned away and Ford followed her. "They’re not the First Ones. Other leaders comes later."

"That's how it works." Willar shrugged and his surface moved in long waves. "The spies could have fundamental information for our safety. For example, they might know if one of the chiefs is a traitor and it’s working with the enemy."

Ford leaned against the wall.

"So not all information passes to the rest of the rebels."

"Not the ones about safety," confirmed Willar.

"It's okay," the Line said, "They're the First Ones. If there are any information we need to know, they’ll tell us. It's always been like this, since the first glorious day of the announcement."

The famous announcement. The Pentagon he met the first time had mentioned it too: it was the moment when Bill Cipher and the other First Ones told everyone about the Three Dimensions, the light, the color and the Multiverse.

"Why do you think they’re in charge?" asked the Line, rhetoric "Because we trust them! They never lied to us and they’ve had many chances to do that, as the Circles have done for centuries. But they didn’t! They wanted to reveal everything, whether it hurt or not, whether we liked it or not, whether it was good or bad. The only thing they asked us is to believe."

The Line put a hand on herself.

"And I believe. _We_ believe." she stroked her striped arm. "They shared with us the formulas to create color. We could’ve created it and covered ourselves with it, but we left this honour to them. We carry only the signs, the First Ones are the only worthy enough to entirely bathe in it."

That explained why women were striped and Shapes had only lines in gray, compared to the rich color that covered the leaders from the top to the base. He remembered the Pentagon he met the first time: he too had a single orange mark on the gray shape. Instead the aristocratic Polygons he had seen during the battles showed a uniform gray, with milky edges.

"The Circles can’t create color?"

"On the contrary," she blurted out, "They've known for millennia how to do it. They simply sealed the formula and never told anyone." she looked at Ford. "Our world was dying, the First Ones gave us our life back. I don’t think you'll ever understand us." she looked at him from head to toe. "Your bosses, as horrible as they were, had to be better than ours: at least they gave you the possibility of color, as it was for Willard and his people or for our friends bird-beings." and nodded to the Semiliquid.

"Uhm..." Ford looked at himself: black jacket, blue scarf, the pink of his skin, brown hair streaked with gray hues. It must seem to her like a multicolored paradise.

"Or maybe his world was simply dominated by color and he absorbed it," Willar replied quietly, his eyes closed. "Like it has been for us."

"It looks like a beautiful world to be in." the Line’s eye bent into a smile. "One day this will too."

"I hope soon."

"The First Ones will show us how to build it." she lifted a hand. "I’ll go to check Soll in the infirmary: he looked worse than others."

"I'll come with you," offered Willar. "I would like to hear stories from the north."

"I'll go outside for a walk," said Ford.

The two moved away, heading deep inside the base. Ford glanced at the closed door of the council room and at the two cat-spies waiting outside.

_It’ll take time._

He shoved both hands in his pockets and headed for the exit: he needed some fresh air.

* * *

 

Dismissed the last spy and closed the folders, the decision was approved and James rolled up the parchment, then leave the room and went to look for the messenger.

"Still safe, for now," Ander told him, from the right end of the table.

"We’re excellent leaders," Bill replied, "Who wouldn’t want to take orders from us?"

The old Triangle rolled his eye.

Boring. Ander was always boring and always worried and he was all _we have to be careful, the enemy is insidious_. Well, it seemed like he was wrong again.

"I don’t know about you guys, but I can’t stay here anymore." Myr got out of his chair and stretched. "I’ll go for a walk and talk to Joltan and his friends."

"Are they gambling again?"

"What?" Myr opened his eye wide and put a hand on his shape, in a gesture of exaggerated surprise. "I had no idea!"

"You totally knew," Bill replied.

The Pentagon lifted both arms, exasperated.

"How the heck do you always know everything?"

"The Queen is always aware of what the other pieces of the chessboard do," he replied, with a wink. "Don’t gamble our informations."

"I would never do it, I'm not as reckless as you are.” he headed for the exit, a hand raised in goodbye. The others followed him out of the room, one at a time.

"Busy day." Ander lingered to gather the sheets in front of him, collecting them in a pile.

"Annoying problems," Bill muttered. Ander gave him another dirty look.

"It's our _duty._ ”

"But we’re also scientists," Bill replied, "And we spend more and more time coming up with attack plans, instead of understanding and knowing."

"We’ll have more time for knowledge, when things will be quiet." Ander cautiously came down from the chair, the bundle of documents under his arm. He met Bill’s sulky expression and his tone softened. "The lesson was fun, don’t you think? It reminded me of old times."

"Mh," agreed Bill, falling back on the chair. "Yes."

"There’ll be other occasions," Ander consoled him, then left the room.

Bill glanced at the other papers that filled the table. Below maps and lists of weapons, there were still drawings, formulas, theories. He still felt their voices overlapping, light and cheerful, curious and greedy. Their shapes were moving, legs folded under the base, hands running on papers.

Actually, Ander had a point: the lesson was fun. And yes, it reminded him of different times, when everything was secret, when they gathered in the old Shape's living room to exchange fragments of knowledge, sitting on the ground and surrounded by books.

Bill stood up and reached the exit. In the doorway he saw a black and blue figure, headed towards the common room.

"Stanford?"

The human stopped and turned to him. His hands were in the pockets and the scarf was raised to cover his mouth: he must have gone out for a walk. He lowered it, uncovering the lower part of his face.

"Can you come in for a moment?"

The human stiffened, took a half step back. He always seemed to be on the point of escaping, to slip away from his gaze, keeping himself distant and detached behind his silence. He never left Bill’s eye the time to look properly at him, to search in his figure the reason of that continuous escape, of that constant distance he placed between himself and the others.

"I just have a question about quarks," added Bill quickly, preventing him from elaborating an excuse. "It’s a matter of minutes."

Stanford Pines hesitated, split between the desire to stay away and his kindness. Finally, he relaxed his shoulders and headed for the door.

Bill preceded him into the room, climbed into the chair and, from there, he sat on the table, throwing away all papers to find the ones he was looking for.

"Here it is." Bill moved the papers with the formulas to the left, forcing Stanford to approach to look at them. The human leaned from the edge of the table. "You said that quarks are the basic building blocks of matter."

"Yes."

"Bound by weak and strong nuclear interaction forces."

"Yes."

"That, with gravity and light-force are the four fundamental forces."

"Yes."

"And they’re all equally powerful."

"Yes."

"But that’s not true." Bill took a pen and began to write on the paper. With the corner of his eye, he saw Stanford Pines approaching, trying to read. "Gravity is weaker than the other three, especially if compared to nuclear forces. If they’re all the same, then the gravity we don’t feel must end somewhere else." he pointed the pen towards Stanford. "And that's where other Dimensions come into play."

The man blinked, surprised.

"Other Dimensions?"

"Higher Dimensions." Bill resumed writing. "If there’s the Third, the Fourth Dimension will exist too, isn’t it? And the Fifth. And the Sixth. Dimensions in which the same forces are always present, that pass from one to the other and take energy." Bill hit the pen on the paper. "Except for gravity. Gravity remains confined to a single Dimension."

He turned to look at the human and felt bloated with pride: his eyes were both wide, both amazed and surprised by his intuitions.

"Interesting." Stanford sat on the table, one of his long legs folded. "But why?"

"Because, I think quarks aren’t the smallest part of the matter," answered Bill. "It makes more sense if elementary particles were like Lines and Polygons. Lines are able to pass between Dimensions, collecting energy from each of them. While Polygons, being closed, can’t expand to other Dimensions..."

"... but keep energy confined to a single one." completed Stanford for him. He rubbed his chin. "Interesting theory."

The human brought one of his hands on the paper, scrolled through the formulas, murmured words that Bill could not catch.

"It may be possible and would explain a lot." Stanford looked at him, his look warm and soft only for a moment, then escaped again. "You’re really brilliant."

Again that sad and melancholic voice. Bill looked for his eyes, but Stanford had returned to focus on the formula, carefully following all steps.

_What are you hiding, Stanford?_

"Hey." Bill caught his attention. "I'm sorry for the interrupted lesson. It was fun."

"No problem," Stanford replied. "You were fulfilling your leaders commitments. I walked out and chatted with Willar."

"What did you talk about?" he asked curiously.

Stanford licked his lips.

"Color."

Color. Bill looked down at himself, on his yellow-painted shape. The first results at Ander's house led to the creation of a dense color, which clung to their hands and made their eyes shine. Each of them fell in love with a shade, the names of the colors passed from mouth to mouth, whispered as if they were names of deities.

He looked at Stanford, his different colors. His figure in black, the blue scarf, his pink hands and face, his brown and silver hair. The colors protected his structure, did not fade and moved with his every movement.

"Your world was dominated by color from the beginning?" he asked.

Stanford nodded.

"Yes." his eyes looked far away, beyond the white walls of the room. "All the colors that are here and even more."

"Wow," murmured Bill, amazed, "Was it chaotic?"

"Not really," Stanford corrected him, "And not always. There were chaotic things, but there were also very regular things."

"What were you part of?" Bill poked him. "Chaotic or regular?"

"I've never really been standardized to the others," the human replied, a corner of his mouth raised in a ghost of a smile. He raised his hand and spread his fingers in front of them. "In my world, the standard is five fingers: I have one more."

Bill looked at them: six fingers, of different lengths and covered with the same pink color of the face, that drew a harmonious semicircle. He chuckled: of all the oddities of the figure of Stanford Pines, _that_ detail was considered the most important?

"Your world really has strange laws."

The smile on Stanford's face widened.

"Sometimes I thought so too."

"A-hem."

Bill turned around: on the threshold there was Ander. His black eye focused on him was serious and scowling, and Bill suddenly felt very aware that he was sitting on the table, next to Stanford Pines, his arm touching the human's.

"I forgot the inventory we did before," said the old Triangle, entering the room. He continued to look at Bill. "About _weapons_. For our _battles_ against the _enemies._ "

Stanford got off the table and landed smoothly on the ground. The smile had vanished from his face and he was again distant as before.

"I’ll leave you to your work." he put both hands in his pockets. "Science can wait." and, with a polite nod towards Ander, he left the room.

Bill snorted, annoyed by the interruption. He changed position on the table, looking bored among the papers.

"What were you doing?"

Bill raised his eye: Ander was still looking badly at him, as if he had done something wrong.

"Nothing," he answered. "We were chatting. That's all.”

The sulky expression did not fade. Ander put his hands on the table.

"Stop that."

Bill looked at him, puzzled.

"Stop what?"

"To eat out of his hand." Ander approached. "To be so close to him. You focus so much on him, that you forget everything else. You can’t let your guard down like that, Bill: he's the newest member, of a race we've never seen before and of which we know nothing."

"Oh come on, do you think he's _dangerous_?" Bill rolled his eyes, chuckling.

"Only because he’s on our side, it doesn’t mean he can’t betray us," replied Ander, still so stupidly serious. "You’re the leader of this rebellion, whether you like it or not. And that's what you are, first of all. Everything else is secondary. _Secondary._ " repeated.

"Yes, yes, all right, secondary." Bill slided back to the chair and reached the ground. "Just calm down, ok? And stop looking at me like that," he added, glaring at Ander's frown. "This war is important, I hadn’t forgotten. Indeed, I’m surprised you think I’m so childish that..."

"Because I know you," Ander interrupted him, emphasizing the last word, "I know how reckless you are."

"How about, instead, you give me a little more credit?" Bill replied, passing his arm around the other’s shape. "I brought the revolution so far, the Circles haven’t crushed us yet and won’t do it soon. So you can raise that eyebrow and stop looking bad at me."

Bill loosened his grip and gave him a pat on the back.

"It's all right, Ander," he said, heading for the exit, "Enjoy your evening."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The idea Bill is explaining to Ford is one of the fundamentals of the String theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory). According to Wikipedia, the String theory developed around the end of 1970, when Ford was already in Gravity Falls, quite isolated from the rest of the world and focused on his studies. So I think it is quite possible that he had not heard about it, since at the beginning it was not a very famous theory like now.  
> (And also I wanted to put it inside, because it's cool. And because there cannot be Billford without science.)


	6. First-move advantage

> _“_ _The first-move advantage in chess is the inherent advantage of the player who makes the first move._ _”_

* * *

 

 

"You guys could stay here another day or two."

"I've stayed too long." James fastened the buttons of his jacket. "The rebels won’t wait me forever in the south."

"Nor in the north," added Hatteras. The Hexagon was already fully dressed, with a gun in one hand and a knife in the other. "We need to attack from there too or the Circles will find where the main base is."

James closed the last button and held out his hands: Leder gave him a knife and a gun.

"Be careful."

"As always," he replied. He glanced at Bill. "Not like some reckless Shape we both know."

Bill snorted, sulkily, and folded his arms.

"You two could stay at least until tomorrow," he insisted.

"Enemies don’t wait." James gave him a pat on the forearm. "There are still the others with you."

"But there are also Cotter and Ander." Bill rolled his eye. "And they’re _boring._ "

"Thank you for making us feel appreciated," Cotter replied, ironically. Ander just sighed.

James shook his hand in a final greeting.

"We'll see each other again in three months," he said in his low, calm voice. His gaze lingered on each of them and then on the rebels who had gathered to say goodbye. "Send the messengers only if there’s urgent news."

Hatteras held out his hand, waiting. Bill shook his too.

"Do you really have to go, too?"

"I have too," he replied, with a wink. "Four months are nothing."

And, with that, both the Octagon and the Hexagon went out of the base with their escorts, heading in two opposite directions.

* * *

 

The difference was palpable in the council room. Without the barrier of Hatteras and the calm voice of James, Ander's lectures and Cotter's protests rose insistently.

_It's unwise._

_It's dangerous._

_Enemies are still in numeric majority._

Bill snorted, while leaving the room. Behind himself, he still felt the old Triangle frowning at him. He really worried too much.

Luckily, the common room was full of rebels who sat, talked and laughed together. The nearest ones greeted him with wide smiles and invited him to sit with them: Bill replied to all greetings and declined their offer. He continued to walk between the tables, to greet others. He did not know what he was looking for, until his eye rested on a black spot, away from other groups and confusion.

Stanford the human was aloof, as usual. He sat on the ground, with his legs bent and arms resting on his knees, a small wall behind which to hide and watch everyone else. He was really an introvert, for being a wanted man who has been halfway around the Multiverse.

His feet carried him to Stanford and Bill sat down next to him, in the same position. Watching the others join their friends, laughing and joking, made him even more sulky.

"Are there any problems?" Stanford asked him, his voice low enough to be heard only by Bill.

His thoughts returned to the meeting, to Ander's serious and warning gaze.

"James and Hatteras."

Stanford raised both eyebrows.

"I didn’t thought you were so close."

"I prefer to have them around," replied Bill. "At least they support me and don’t protest all the time, like Ander: he always aims to the safe route and prefers not to risk, unless it’s an emergency." he looked at Stanford. "But, without risking, we wouldn’t be where we are today: if we hadn’t risked, now we would still be subdued by the Circles."

Bill sighed.

"Then there’s Cotter, who worries and takes out the worst possible scenarios: what if the plan fails? What if the enemies discover us? What if they capture our allies? What if they’re spying us? Here again, we shouldn’t do anything, since anything has a "what if"!"

"They're just more cautious," replied Stanford, with his melancholic voice, "And they worry about consequences. They’re much more circumspect than us."

_Us._

"Do you know someone like that too?"

"A friend," replied the human, looking down at the ground. "Once.”

A distant, melancholic gaze. A few words to hide something.

As always.

"Your friend was also a big brother?" Bill asked. "It must be, because every brother I know spend its time worrying about something. Cotter always goes around taking Kryptos with him and hardly lets him talk. Leder is more tolerant towards Ephie, but she’s a walking concern too. In the end, the only ones who want to risk a bit more are me, Ephie and Myr. But we can’t do anything if we can’t all agree. And to agree, we must convince the other three and..." he snorted, exasperated, "The meetings end up lasting for hours."

"It's never easy with brothers," said Stanford. His shape was stiffer, his hands closed. His eyes were focused on the ground and the curve of his lips revealed sadness and impenetrable memories.

"You know from experience?"

Stanford’s figure moved again, as if the jacket had suddenly become tighter.

"Brothers choose different things," he answered, finally, "They want different things."

_But which one wanted them?_

"I bet you wanted the strangest ones," Bill said, a smile in his tone of voice. "Besides, you're the one who didn’t follow the standard.”

Stanford exhaled and his lips folded into a smile.

"I’ve always liked everything that was strange and mysterious," he confessed.

"This dimension must look fantastic to you. What's better than seeing semiliquid beings, feathered creatures and geometric shapes, all gathered together in the same place?"

"I saw stranger things too."

"Like what?"

"Beings shaped like an M."

Bill raised an eyebrow.

"Are you kidding?"

"In a world shaped like an M."

"You’re kidding."

"With houses like an M, cars like an M and they speak putting M first in every word."

Bill blinked.

"Was it a Torture Dimension?"

"It was for me," replied the human. "I’ve never been so happy to leave."

"It would’ve been the same for me, believe me."

Ford smiled again. He was different when he smiled: shadows disappeared from his face and eyes, the pink cheeks veiled with a more intense shade.

He was strange. He was interesting. He was mysterious and hid something.

And Bill wanted to _know_.

* * *

 

The next battle ended with an overwhelming victory.

Fifty dead, forty-six good weapons stolen from the fallen. The enemies could still be in numeric majority, but they were gathering more and more power ups.

Dinner continued for hours, amid laughter, toast and talk. The battle was re-enacted to the smallest detail, glasses were filled over and over again. Two bird-beings began to stage a fight in the middle of the room, encouraged by the others.

Surrounded by chatter and laughter, Bill raised his glass in the umpteenth toast. The room was full of light and color, the air smelled of freedom. At times like this, victory seemed really close.

Ephie was sitting at the next table, a glass in her hand as well. Leder roamed from table to table, moving swiftly between the glasses and stopping here and there to cheer for a sentence, laugh at a joke, toast with someone else.

Cotter sat with a group of bird-beings, accompanied by Kryptos, who stood close to him like a shadow. At the table on the right, Myr let someone pour him a drink. On the other hand, Ander was still at his first drink and preferred to listen stories rather than talk or participate. _Same boring Ander_.

Bill’s eye sought another familiar figure and found it, for once not alone against the wall. Stanford sat at a table, surrounded by Semiliquids and Shapes, one hand closed around a glass. He had a slight smile on his lips, while his eyes moved from one figure to another, following the conversation. At one point he started talking and Bill tensed, hoping to be able to grasp at least one word in the overlap of chatter that separated them.

Someone poured him a drink and Bill raised his glass, immediately imitated by his whole table. After drinking, he turned back to look at Stanford's table: the human was still talking, believe it or not. One of his hands went up, his fingers slipped between the feathers on his head.

Bill drank again, holding back a laugh. Those feathers looked like soft snowflakes, raised and streaked with silver. He wondered if they were really as soft as they seemed.

"Hey there."

Bill blinked: Ephie slided in the seat in front of him, armed with a full glass. Her eye sparkled, partly because of the excitement of the party, partly for the wine.

"How many glasses have you had?"

"Oh geez, I must’ve sat in the wrong place," she said. "I wanted to talk to Bill, wasn’t expecting to find Ander."

"Maybe I should make you walk in the Circles’ camp, so you’ll clear your head."

Ephie held out her glass, laughing, and Bill touched it with his.

"The plan went really well." Ephie performed in a half bow. "Great strategy, _my Queen_."

"I know."

"How modest." Ephie leaned on the table. " What’re you doing? Checking all the pawns on your chessboard? Or are you interested in a particular Rook?"

Bill raised an eyebrow.

"A Rook? Really?"

"Yes, because he's tall, dark and quiet," she replied. "A real figure of mystery."

Bill looked at Stanford again.

"The Rook is the second most powerful piece of chess, after the Queen." his gaze returned to Ephie. "Did you know that?"

"I suspected." she took a sip, then changed her tone. "He isn’t a trained fighter, but he knows what he’s doing and how to use weapons. Even his aim isn’t bad." a mischievous twinkle in the pupil. "It’ll never be like mine, of course, but he’s good."

"No one has your aim." Bill corrected her, raising his glass in a silent toast. Ephie answered by folding her eye into a smile.

"But enough about my perfect aim," she said. "Now I want to relax a bit: when we’ll have a new lesson on the Multiverse? I want to refine the acceleration theory a little bit and maybe even do some calculations outside, one evening, so we can see the stars."

"A nice program," agreed Bill. "I think neither Ander nor Cotter will object. Cotter in particular: during the second last meeting, he did nothing but scribble mathematical formulas, while he thought that nobody looked."

Ephie laughed.

"Everyone’s missing those times, after all." she sighed, a smile in her voice. "We’re still intellectuals."

Bill lowered his eye to the glass, to the swirling wine inside. From the dark vortex resurfaced the memory of Ander's study, the pentagonal walls covered with books, the three armchairs, the two sofas, the floor filled with books. They who sat on the ground, Ander who was the only one to sit in his chair to rest his tired shape. The pages that were turned, the formulas that were transcribed.

"I’d have taken only that from our previous life," Ephie admitted, as if she had seen the same memory as Bill.

"We'll have that again," he answered. "In the world we’ll build."

The Line smiled. She raised her glass.

"To that world."

 

 

Toasts continued for most of the night, before fatigue took over and everyone dragged themselves out of the room, still with a smile on their faces and the stunned expression resulted from a good drink.

Bill left his glass and got out of the chair. The world wavered as soon as he put his feet on the ground and had to cling to the table to not fall. From a distance, he could still hear some sporadic laughter, fragments of songs, mumbling voices.

He took a few steps and the world stopped swaying, letting him focus on the image of empty tables and abandoned glasses. Tomorrow some of the rebels would have cleaned, perhaps even protesting against the exuberance of the others.

His feet led Bill to the distant table, which he had watched all evening and had never reached. He touched the bench with one hand, almost expecting to feel a residual fragment of the warmth of the bird-beings and Stanford: he found nothing but gray wood.

Stanford, of course, had disappeared suddenly. A moment before, Bill had seen him listening to one of the bird-beings, the next he had disappeared, leaving an empty space. And just when the drinks were over and the longest talk began: stories about lives, homes, families and war. All themes from which the human seemed to escape.

_What are you hiding?_

He had a brother. He had left his Dimension because he was strange, different, for those six fingers. And then? What was that human still hiding? What was he holding out?

_What are you hiding from me, Stanford?_

He reappeared in front of him, tall and dark, with his lips sealed and eyes burning with open flame. Perhaps Ephie was right to call him a Rook.

Still, Stanford Pines escaped from his chessboard. Met his gaze, but avoided him. Opened up, but still hiding something. He tried to escape in anonymity, but the fire inside him made him shine. That human was certainly the strangest being he had ever met.

And only Bill knew _how much_ he liked strange things.


	7. Gardez

> _"The word “gardez” (from French “Gardez la Reine!” “Protect the Queen!”) is an announcement to the opponent that their Queen is under direct attack.”_

* * *

 

 

"So you think that if I increase the coefficient here, I could balance the whole equation?"

"We could try and see what happens." Stanford squared the coefficient and redid the formula on the sheet, muttering through his teeth one calculation after another.

"Two hundred and two." Ephie anticipated him, calculating the power in a blink of an eye. Ford looked up at her: the young Line blinked.

"I've always been quick with calculations," she explained, as a justification.

The final result was not yet correct. Ford tapped the pen against his chin, looking for a different solution.

"I think we’re approaching it in the wrong way." Ephie turned her sheet already full of formulas and transcribed the equation again, but by changing the exponentiation. "We have to look at it in a different way."

“What if it’s impossible to calculate the acceleration?"

"Nothing’s impossible," Ephie replied. "And if it's chaotic, we'll find the chaos formula. There’s no senseless chaos.”

Ford answered with a cold smile. He thought back to the Nightmare Realm, the Dimension of chaos that was dominated by a god who was pure geometric precision. Perhaps Ephie was not so wrong.

"Let’s try a square root, then," Ford ventured. "It should move something. Otherwise, we can still try with factorials."

Ephie immersed herself in her work and started to write furiously. The sound of small steps made Ford's head rise: Ander had walked into the empty common room and was approaching their table.

"Are you studying?" asked the old Triangle.

"Ephie asked me to help with her acceleration theory," explained Ford. "We’re trying to calibrate it."

"Any results?"

A shake of his head. Ander sighed and turned to the Line.

"I understand you're fond of that formula, Ephie, but I think it's best if you discard it and start over again."

"I won’t discard it, until I've tried everything."

The old Shape turned his eye to Ford.

"These youngsters," he commented. Ford answered with a smile.

"I know, I know: stubborn and reckless." Ephie looked away from the sheet. "Speaking of which, has any news arrived? How the attack’s going?"

"Still nothing." Ander frowned and the wrinkles on the corners of his eye deepened. "We should’ve heard from Bill two hours ago."

The Line shrugged.

"Typical of him. I bet the attack is already over and he’s preparing his return in style."

"He _must_ inform us, no matter if it's good or bad."

"If things were going badly, he would’ve sent someone already." Ephie looked down at the paper. "You worry too much, Ander. Bill knows what..."

"Ander!" a Pentagon came running, weapon in hand. "A messenger arrived: Bill has been captured!"

Silence fell in the empty common room. Ford let his arms drop on the table, Ander's eye widened.

"... he’s doing." concluded Ephie, in a whisper.

* * *

 

" _How did they manage_ to kidnap him?"

Cotter walked back and forth, repeating that very question for three whole minutes. The messenger - a Square covered in gray dust, with the gun still in his hand - was sitting on one of the chairs in the council room, with a Pentagon beside him who was bandaging his right arm.

The rebel leaders were all there, standing around him. The only ones who occupied two chairs were Ander and Cipher's top hat, which he himself had left in his chair, as he did every time before he took part in a battle.

"They caught us unprepared," repeated the messenger Square. "We counted fifty enemies, but we didn’t think there could be any other lynx-beings hiding somewhere. They were on us in no time, one of them took Bill and they ran away."

"They planned the whole thing." Leder crossed her arms, frowning. "They just wanted him."

"Yes." the Square clenched his hands in two fists: his shape trembled with rage. "Those bloody lynx-beings ignored us and fled like cowards! They didn’t even try to fight us: no, they ran away, taking advantage because we could never reach them!"

"What about Semiliquids?"

"They ran after them, but the lynx-beings lost them.” The Square stood up, freeing his arm from the grip of the Pentagon doctor. "I want to get Bill back."

"We all want that." Leder reassured him. "But, first of all, we need a plan."

Cotter still kept walking up and down, fuming. Ephie’s fists were clenched, a strap of knives already hanging from her shoulder. Ander sat in a chair, his hands on the armrests and his eye focused on the ground: Ford could feel the intensity with which he was thinking, considering all possibilities, looking for a plan.

That concern was unnecessary. It was not like they had caught some little helpless rebel, armed with just an ion weapon. The one they caught was a being able to prevail in every situation, to bring fear and torment to his enemies, to overwhelm them with his anger. If there was anyone the walls of a cell could never hold in, that was Bill Cipher: chaos incarnate.

And yet... Ford’s gaze rested on the top hat. He remembered the golden Triangle in front of him, holding a gun to him as a gift for the successful attack. Sitting on the ground next to him, complaining about Ander and Cotter. Suggesting attack plans in the council room. Sitting on that very same table, while presenting him his theory about the structure of matter, drawing on Ford’s every comment with thirst for knowledge.

That was not Bill Cipher. The golden Triangle that ruled in that world at war was nothing but a silhouette, infinitely younger and infinitely less omniscient, of the demonic figure he knew so well. He was a young Shape like Ephie, foolish and reckless, who fought for freedom and was first an intellectual, then a fighter.

"A team will go," Ander announced at last. "Five. That’s it."

"Me," Ephie offered, instantly.

"Me too," joined the messenger Square.

"I’m with you," Featherlight said.

"I'm coming too." Willar’s waving shape darkened to a strong blue.

It was Bill. And Bill needed someone to help him.

Ford took a step forward.

"I’ll come too."

Ander looked at them one by one.

"All right," he agreed. "Take up your weapons. And just come back in one piece."

* * *

 

 

Obviously the lynx-beings had reached the enemy's fortress, in order to keep their little prey in the prisons. And, of course, the prisons were guarded with many more guards than last time.

"They increased security, of course." Ephie flipped a knife in her hands. "But this doesn’t change anything."

A gust of wind stirred the frayed sheets that blocked their little shelter from light. Hidden in the ruins of a collapsed houses, they could not even light a fire to keep themselves warm, because from the nearby fortress they would immediately notice it.

Featherlight crouched down, his big feathers protecting his chest and legs. The Square that stood guard, held the flaps of his jacket. Ephie kept shifting the weight from one foot to the other, turning the blades between her fingers to consume energy and keep herself warm. Willar, however, did not even seem to notice the cold: he was in a liquid state, dissolved in a puddle on the ground, except for the head that protruded like a funny blue balloon.

Ford just flattened himself against the wall, pulling his knees up against his chest to stay warmer.

"Willar, you go first," said Ephie, "Kill the guards outside. Once you open the door, we’ll enter too and attack them together.”

"But the whole group will be in danger."

"You can’t face thirty guards alone," replied the Line. "Since Featherlight and Ford are bigger than us, they’ll immediately draw attention to them, so the guards will ignore me and Kyle. We have twenty minutes maximum and nobody should raise alarm until we’re out. Are you ready?"

Her eye rested on Kyle the Square, who raised his gun. Featherlight spread his feathers, revealing the shimmer of blades. Ford moved into a half-seated position, one knee raised and one on the ground. Willar nodded.

Ephie straightened up and sighed deeply. She put the knife back in her belt.

"Let's do this."

Willar nodded one last time and his head lowered, becoming one with the puddle. He moved, sliding on stones and rubbles, passed beneath the fluttering sheet of their shelter and headed for the Fortress.

Featherlight came out first, Ford followed him. They crawled, gray in the gray. Whenever the bird-being stopped, Ford stopped too, eyes down, breathing through clenched teeth. He could not even lift his head, because who was on the walls could have noticed the white of his eyes.

He felt the bird-being move again and Ford resumed to crawl, until one wing touched his hair. He stood up and flattened himself against the Fortress wall, beside Featherlight. He looked in the dust in front of him, but could not see a single fragment of Ephie or Kyle: the gray cover worked really well.

He followed Featherlight until they reached the embrasure from which they would come through and climbed up behind him. It took the bird-general a while to get in, squeezing his big figure into the small entrance. Ford just held his breath and came in: he turned and saw the two Shapes sliding through the embrasure without a problem.

The prisons’ entrance was clear, except for two horned guards lying on the ground with their throats cut. Willar was at the door, half-liquified on the ground in a blue puddle. He gave them a nod, then completely melted and slid under the door.

Featherlight nodded at Ford. _Let’s go_.

On the other side of the door there was darkness and another guard lying on the floor with his throat cut. Willar was halfway down the steps; he rose from the puddle and turned to them.

"Two coming."

Featherlight ran forward, with a shout that drew the guards’ attention. Distracted by him, no one noticed Willar sliding between them, with the two small gray shapes of Ephie and Kyle balanced on top of him. Ford fired and hit a guard, the other was cut into slices by Featherlight's hidden blades, spraying blood on his feathers covered with gray dust.

More guards were coming from the lower floors: Willar went first, suddenly emerged in front of them and cut a guard's throat. Kyle shot at the second, Ephie jumped and put her blades in the eyes of the third.

The blinded guard screamed, stepped back, pressing his injured eyes and bumping into another guard that was coming: they rolled together down the stairs, with a crash of groans and weapons. Ephie landed on Willar, who turned to liquid again and led her down the stairs.

Ford retrieved Kyle and dashed behind them. Featherlight caught up, chopping guards in his passage. Ford fired, striking from the distance. A second ray left his shoulder and he glanced at the small Square, which was holding onto him, a hand clutched on the laces of his jacket.

"It’s okay?" he asked.

"I can do this."

A guard shot at them and Ford moved away. He saw Ephie stab it, while Willar turned solid again and hit two other guards. They seemed to never end, as if they were rising from the bottom of the prison.

Featherlight hit another guard and Ford shot two of them that were arriving, clearing the way for the bird-being. Willar went down with Ephie. Featherlight followed and Ford went behind them, while reloading his gun. He was the last one to reach the end of the staircase, with Kyle still holding onto him like a climber on a mountainside. Featherlight was busy with two guards, a third one came towards them: Ford shot at the second, Kyle at the third. The bird-being turned to give him a wink and ran forward, searching through the cells.

Bill was locked in the last one, a silhouette of golden light clinging to the black bars of his prison. Ephie was already breaking through the lock with one of her blades, protected by Willar, who fought with other guards. Kyle jumped to the ground and ran to give him a hand.

Featherlight was facing two other guards, armed with blades. Ford fired at them, hit a third one and saw a fleeing figure. _He wants to raise the alarm_. He shot the guard in the back and the creature collapsed on the ground.

A figure came out of nowhere to his right: Ford raised the gun a second too late and the guard was on him, a knife headed towards his stomach.

He moved just in time: the blade pierced the air, chasing him, and blood spurted among them. Ford gritted his teeth, looked down and saw a cut on his right hand.

_Damn you._

He moved the gun to the left hand and shot: the guard avoided the blow and headed again to his torso. Ford moved back a step and saw an ionic ray coming from his left, piercing the guard’s head from side to side.

The horned creature fell facedown. Ford turned and saw Bill with a gun in his hand, the door of his cell open.

"Out of here!" shouted Ephie.

Featherlight picked up her and Bill in his wings, and Ford grabbed Kyle. Willar liquified and preceded them up the stairs to the prisons’ entrance.

Noises came from the upper floors. Willar aimed at the embrasure they had entered and slipped on the other side, followed by the Shapes and Featherlight. Ford saw a horned monster and a Polygon appear and shot both of them, then he passed through the small window.

The howling of a siren came from inside the fortress. Voices and shouts began to fill the air and overlap.

Ford hit the ground. Featherlight had the three Shapes in his wings, Willar was already preceding them down the slope. Regardless of the chaos behind them, Ford passed the gun in his wounded hand and joined them in their flight, rushing among the rubble, away from the enemy's fortress.

* * *

 

"Only fifteen minutes!"

Ephie was delighted, her voice so loud that Ford feared it could overcome the shelter offered by the base’s walls, pass through the ground and reach the outer surface, meters above their heads.

The gathered crowd cheered with her, from the bird-beings towering over the others, to the Semiliquids that made persistent questions.

But, above all, there were Shapes everywhere. Lines, Triangles, Squares, Pentagons and Hexagons made a gray sea, dotted with colored spots, their eyes bright and their hands raised. Some clapped, some screamed, some laughed, some cried. And, in front of them, the only Shapes that had the honor of the total color, the First Ones, who asked again and again to repeat the whole story, who tried to gather information, who embraced Bill one at a time.

"You're an irresponsible and an idiot." was Ander's comment when he came face to face with him.

"Awww, I missed you too, old man," said Bill, giving him a pat on the side.

"What did the Circles have in mind?" asked Leder.

"I’ve no idea," admitted Bill, naively. "Maybe they were planning to kill me in some blatant way, to show how strong they are. One of the usual ceremonies Circles like so much."

"It was _soooo_ amazing!" jumped Ephie, still excited by the battle and covered with enemy blood, bright red that made the green mint of her shape stand out even more. "They really thought that thirty guards would be enough to stop us! And we killed them all in fifteen minutes!"

The crowd answered with glee to the Line’s excitement, especially the Shapes that wore the same color as her. Ford noticed that he too was smiling, surrounded by that sea of joy.

"Let's go to the common room!" Bill suggested, drowning out the other voices.

"Let’s go!"

"Yes!"

The crowd began to flow in that direction. Ford followed them, when he felt something warm and soft lean on his shoulder. He turned: Featherlight was looking at him.

"It's better if you go to the infirmary to take care of that," he advised him, hinting at something below.

Ford followed the direction of his gaze and his eyes fell on his wounded hand. He lifted it: the back was crusted with dried blood and only small drops kept coming out of the cut.

"It's nothing," he minimized. It was not a deep wound, it would have been enough to clean it of the dried blood. He had suffered much worse, while fighting in Dimension 30.

"Do it anyway," Featherlight insisted. With the other wing he pointed to the infirmary and Ford could do nothing but resign and obey, heading to that direction.

"Stanford?"

Ford turned: the leader of the bird-beings gave him a smile and a nod.

"Thank you. You’ve been very helpful."

Ford nodded back and went to the infirmary.

* * *

 

The last Shapes dispersed, finally satisfied by food, wine and stories. Bill tapped the glass again on the table and Myr filled it. Sitting all around, there were still Ephie, Cotter and Kryptos, Featherlight and Hol of the Semiliquids.

"Okay, I admit it: for a moment I thought you would leave me with the Circles until the next day," said Bill, waving his glass as he spoke. "I could hear Ander saying I deserved it, because I hadn’t sent anyone to the base. " _It’ll do him good to be a prisoner for a while longer, so he’ll learn that war isn’t a game and that he must behave well_ "."

Everyone laughed at his perfect imitation of the old Triangle's pedantic tone.

"You would’ve deserved it, but we love you too much." Cotter emptied his glass and jumped off his chair. "I think it's time to sleep. Kryptos, you come too, you’ve had enough."

"Just one more drink!"

"Don’t be a child: we already have one and it's also the boss," replied Cotter, winking at Bill.

"Queen you mean," replied Bill, raising his glass and taking a long sip. The Square rolled his eye, exasperated.

"See you tomorrow, guys." Cotter raised a hand. "We’re going."

Bill lowered his glass and looked around the empty room. There were the red and blue of Cotter and Kryptos going away, the green of Ephie, the purple of Myr, the lilac of Hol, and the brown of Featherlight. But something was missing. A darker color.

"Has anyone seen Stanford?" he asked. "I haven’t seen him in hours."

"I sent him to the infirmary." Featherlight revealed quietly. Bill turned to look at him.

"And why?"

"Because he got injured."

Bill opened his eye wide.

" _What?!_ "

"At one hand," Featherlight explained, "I sent him to take care of that..."

Bill got down off the bench and, without a word, walked away from the people and left the room, heading to the infirmary. What was Featherlight thinking, not telling him something so important? Stanford injured himself to save him and Featherlight was just telling him at that moment? After _hours_?

He stormed in the infirmary, ready to push away any doctors who could even think of holding him back. Instead he found no one, neither doctors, nor nurses, nor Stanford.

_Is it possible that he left?_

He heard a faint breath on the left: there was a curtain that hid the areas of the patients from the main room. Bill pushed the curtain aside and saw Stanford there, sitting on the ground with his back against the wall. The human raised his head: his left hand was on his knee, while the right hand on the thigh. The palm was covered with a white bandage.

At that sight, the irritation that was boiling inside Bill turned off, leaving a tremor that ran from the base to the top. He approached without a word, until he reached that big hand. Bill rested his hand on Ford’s one, four small black fingers compared to Stanford's six.

"You got injured to save me," he finally murmured.

Stanford slightly shifted.

"It's nothing," he replied, clumsily, "Just a small wound..."

Bill took that bandaged hand in his, caressed it with his eyelashes. He heard Stanford hold his breath.

"I don’t want you to lose even one of these fingers," he admitted, touching them with his.

He looked up and saw Stanford looking at him too. For the first time, he was not escaping his gaze, looking elsewhere, retreating in other gazes, running away from him. And the flame in his eyes lit the dim light of the empty room.

Bill did not know what he was doing, when he put his hand around Ford's jacket. He did not know what he was doing when he got on top of him, climbing up his chest. He did not know what he was doing when he continued to climb, clinging to his clothes with both hands and feet, or when Stanford _helped_ him climb, accompanying him with his wounded hand. He did not know what he was doing even when he reached his face, put his hands on Ford’s cheeks and stood up in front of him, looking into his eyes. He did not know what he was doing, because he did not know what he wanted to achieve, how to get it and how to silence the tremor that was stirring inside him.

Luckily, Stanford knew what to do.


	8. Centralisation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has a big Billford scene. Enjoy :D
> 
> PS. I would like to dedicate this chapter to the lovely Pengychan, who is an evil writer that loves to make readers suffer, but is also a wonderful friend and I am forever grateful because she reads and corrects all my mistakes in every chapter <3

> _"In chess, centralisation means moving a piece toward the center of the board, where they will not only control the center, but their influence will extend to other areas.”_

* * *

 

The meeting ran smoothly and peacefully, unremarkable. Words followed each other in a continuous stream of muffled murmurs, the tone was always the same and only timbres changed, highs and lows, like ripples of a calm river.

Bill was watching everything from behind a veil, which blurred the contours of things. The images in front of him did not exist: he was immersed in other images, in another room, in the small silent space of the infirmary, with his legs on Stanford Pines’ shoulders and his hands on his cheeks.

And every fragment of that memory was pure delight.

 

_He held his cheeks in both hands and Stanford’s hand - his hand, so strange, that he hurt to save him - supported him by the back, preventing him from falling backwards. Stanford’s two eyes looked at him, stared, without escaping. His lips were parted, waiting._

_And Bill looked at him, too, waiting to understand what to do._

_Stanford was the first to break that stalemate: he exhaled, looked down and, for a split second, Bill feared that the moment was over, that the magic stasis had vanished._

_Then, Stanford tilted his head toward him and kissed him under the eye._

_The touch of that mouth affected Bill’s entire shape, made him tighten the grip on the human’s cheeks. Stanford pulled away and looked at him again._

_At the spot he kissed, Bill felt fire flare up. He slid his knees down from his shoulders - Ford supported him - to get himself at the right height, then changed his eye into a mouth and tried to answer with a kiss under his eye, the same way Ford did._

_But Ford moved forward and kissed him on the lips._

_Shivers went down his shape, as Ford poured fire inside him. The hand on his back lit sparks of delight every time those fingers moved up and down to caress him. It was like being immersed in a soft river, with flames licking him without burning. It was as if every spot touched by Ford made his shape bloom, petals that opened around a corolla of fire._

_He broke off the kiss to utter a moan, which sounded loud in the silence and strange to his own ears. He had never made such a sound._

_He had never experienced something like this._

_Ford's mouth rested on his shape, kissing him again, opening flowers of delight, eyes closed as he left those kisses of flame. Bill lifted his face and kissed him again on the lips, deeper, pushing against him, letting both hands slide behind his ears, until his fingers slipped between those soft feathers on Ford’s head that, damn, were really soft._

_Ford let him do it, answered to his impetuousness by following his rhythm, without haste. He burned with a high, constant flame and lit every corner of his mouth only by touching it with his tongue. Bill felt himself sinking, surrounded by that burning fire that could not hurt him._

_This time it was Ford who broke off the kiss, panting, his breath warm against his shape. Bill was panting too, and Ford leaned in to kiss him again, leaving those little flowers of fire everywhere. He pushed Bill higher, still kissing every part of him, and Bill put his knees back on Ford’s shoulders to support himself, his hands swimming in that sea of soft feathers. He was trembling from the effort of holding back the moans he felt coming up his mouth._

_Ford's kisses became deeper, longer. His lips moved back to the bow tie, stroked it and retreated, leaving his teeth visible. He grabbed a flap of black silk between his teeth and raised his eyes to Bill, in a silent request for permission._

_With shallow breath and struggling to hold back the moans, Bill freed a trembling hand from Ford’s feathers and pulled one end of the bow tie, loosening it._

_He had never done anything like this._

_Ford gave a slight pull and the fabric slipped away, with a rustle that made Bill palpitate. He had never found himself like that, naked and at the mercy of someone else, whether it was a doctor, a friend or an enemy. And now he was naked in the hands of Stanford, a large human being, three times his size, totally different from him, coming from an unknown Dimension._

_Stanford looked down at him and kissed him at the spot left uncovered, lighting another fiery flower that filled Bill with ecstasy. A moan escaped his lips and one leg trembled, to the point of sliding down from his shoulder: Bill fell against the hand that was supporting him, his hands slipped from the soft feathers to Ford’s cheeks and the human bent again, to kiss him once more._

_But, instead of kissing him with his lips, he did it with his tongue._

_Bill’s breath came out in a sharp, ecstatic moan, delighted by the rough touch of Ford's tongue against him. The human licked him again, supporting him with both hands to lean over and caress him with long licks. If his lips lit fiery flowers, his tongue created a rosebush of fire, a sublime delight that clouded Bill’s sight, making him fumble for Ford’s cheeks, his face, his soft feathers, to have him still on his shape, to have his mouth on himself, to have more and more and more._

_And Stanford satisfied him, malleable under his fingers, kissing and licking him without forgetting a single fragment. He laid kisses on his legs and feet, along his arms and hands, then brought them back to his face, while leaning back to lick his shape._

_Bill led him to his mouth and Ford let himself be led, abandoning himself in the kiss. They parted and Ford resumed to kiss him everywhere, tireless, so absurdly good with that tongue, so absurdly able to understand what point could make him moan and sigh. And, after every groan, every kiss, every lick, he looked at him with those deep eyes, without saying a word._

_He had never been looked at like that._

_Ford leaned forward again, licking him in the middle. Bill moaned as he felt his warm breath tickling his wet shape, gasped when his lips leaned on the same spot in a long kiss. A crown of kisses surrounded that first, long wet kisses that made him shudder._

_Bill exhaled, trembling and delighted, his hands immersed in Stanford's feathers. He pushed himself against him, against that mouth, looking for it again and again. A small pressure on the cheeks was enough to make Ford stop and the human obeyed, looking up at him._

_Stanford's eyes still burned brightly._

_With both hands on his cheeks, Bill searched for his mouth and Ford put it over his again._

 

"Bill?"

The outlines of the memory faded and dispersed, catapulting Bill back into the council room. He blinked several times, refocusing where he was: many chairs were empty, the door open, Ephie and Ander were going out. The meeting was over, probably.

Beside him, Myr was piling up his papers.

"Are you all right?" he asked again.

"Oh, yes, of course, all right." Bill rubbed above his eye - the memory of Ford's mouth on it almost made him blush - and began to gather the papers confusedly.

"Today you seemed a bit distracted." the Pentagon put the documents under his arm. "Maybe you should’ve rested, instead of attending today’s meeting."

"No, no, everything’s fine." repeated Bill mechanically, his eye on the table while he was gathering papers in bulk. "Don’t worry."

"If you say so." Myr turned. "See ya later."

"Later, yes."

Myr went out and, as he heard him walking away, Bill dropped the papers and fell back into his chair, covering the eye with his hands and feeling himself burn with embarrassment.

He had never been touched that way, he had never experienced such sublime ecstasy. In his world, there was absolutely _nothing_ that could even come close to the sensation that the mouth and tongue of Stanford made him feel. The only thing that could vaguely be similar was the mutual touching of two Shapes, but it only took place in private and after marriage, when two married Shapes could engage in the most intimate contact that existed in his world: to caress their sides and move both hands in front and on the back of each other.

But caressing the shape could never have sparked the same fire that was still burning inside him. The hands, however pleasant, could not compete with the delicious contrast between soft lips and rough tongue that Stanford had given him. It was a whole other level of intimacy, it was a whole different world, which went far beyond the limits of his own and, in fact, knocked them down one after the other, opening up a range of new and different sensations. He would never have imagined that mouth and tongue could be used that way, nor that that way could be _so_ pleasant.

He chuckled. He was quite sure that he had broken at least a thousand laws that regulated relationship between beings from different Dimensions: actually he was not entirely sure that similar laws existed but, if they existed, he and Stanford had certainly broken all of them. No law - whether existing or not - would have ever accepted that he, a two-dimensional Triangle with his geometric precision, was kissing a being like Stanford. Too big for him, not enough geometric, with those textures arranged so irregularly - _the rough tongue, the softness of the feathers on his head, the warmth of his mouth_ \- and especially with those hands so big and so precious for Ford, those hands that had made him strange and different and that had helped him to get there, to Bill.

Not to mention, what they would have thought in his old society! Not only he devoted himself into unthinkable depravity that would have made the most severe Polygon faint, but he had made it _out of wedlock_ and with something that was not _even a Shape_! And not only he was not ashamed at all, but he found it the most _wonderful_ thing he had ever experienced.

_Makes me want to go to the Circles and tell them, just to see them drop dead in shock._

The thought made him laugh, the sound echoed in the empty room. He had never felt so alive, so full of energy. His own yellow seemed more vivid than usual, his vision sharper, his shape more tangible. He never thought that his shape could feel all those sensations: it was as if Stanford had awakened more, new and beautiful senses.

He caressed himself under the eye. Stanford was always so modest, so distant, black as a fragment of a starless sky. Even when he was surrounded by others and talked to them, he was far away, different.

_"I've never really been standardized to the others."_

And he was not. Oh, he was not at all. The way he kissed him had nothing to do with kisses exchanged in his world. Those that existed were only ritual kisses, exchanged more for good luck than anything else: at the birth of a child, the mother kissed its shape. To announce the marriage was formalised, two Shapes kissed each other above the eye. There was no touching each other with the lips Stanford had done with him. No Shape could ever even imagine touching the mouth or the tongue of another Shape. And kisses were cold touches of lips against shape, which did not leave even a mark.

Instead, Stanford's kisses left flowers of fire, which Bill still felt burning on him. They were moist and deep kisses, with lips that hesitated on him to savor every inch of his surface. They were kisses that covered him with meticulous care. Stanford - so distant, so cold - had dedicated his whole self to do it, pouring flames into each of them.

The thought of his kisses made Bill tingle all over again. He slid his hands down from his eye. He wanted more. He wanted Stanford's kisses again.

Steps approached and from the open door entered Stanford, as if he had heard his mental wish and had appeared there, to make it happen: an unlikely genius wish-granter, with a black shape and soft feathers on his head.

Stanford met his gaze and blinked, also surprised by finding him there.

"Hello," Bill greeted him.

"Hi..." Stanford looked around and rubbed his neck, in a gesture more embarrassed than distant, "I was looking for Ephie... for... her formula. Yesterday we talked about her acceleration formula and... I was helping her and..."

"I think she left the papers here," Bill replied. He climbed onto the table and reached Ephie's place, then rummaged through her sheets. "Is one of these?" he asked, lifting a piece of paper.

Stanford approached and took the sheet from his hand. He held it in front of his face.

"No, this was the wrong one." he gave it back to him.

"I get it." Bill dropped the paper on the table and looked up at Stanford. "I see Herman let you leave."

"The doctor?" Ford lifted his bandaged hand and rubbed the back with the left. "I asked for it. It was nothing and it seemed stupid to keep me there."

Silence fell between them. Bill just looked at him, propping himself up on one arm to remain seated. Stanford kept looking at his hand and stroking it, absent.

It was him who broke the silence. He let his hands fall, sighed and looked up at him again.

"Bill..."

"Sit down," Bill interrupted him, pointing to one of the chairs. Stanford looked at it, sighed again and sat down.

"Bill..."

Bill approached, walking on all fours. He gripped his jacket with one hand and passed the other behind Ford's neck. He pulled Ford towards him and changed his eye to lips, then kissed him.

Like the night before, Stanford melted in the kiss. His hands went up to surround Bill and put him on his chest, supporting him by the back and the base. Those delicious fingers lit up every point of his shape again: Bill could feel each part quiver, sing, moan. His hand went up from Stanford's neck to his feathers and the human moaned in the kiss, deepening it, pushing against Bill, into his mouth, his tongue so wonderfully skilled.

They parted with difficulty, though both breathless. Bill let out a chuckle, opening his eyelids over Stanford's face, panting against him, his eyes bright with flame.

"This... thing..." Ford murmured.

Bill placed a finger on his lips.

"It’ll be our secret," he replied in a low voice. "No one needs to know."

Ford lowered his eyes, thinking. He raised them up and nodded, serious.

"Okay," he accepted, then kissed the finger on his mouth. Bill felt sparks of delight light up everywhere.

_More._

He run one hand behind his  head and pulled Ford toward him, to be covered with those fiery kisses. Stanford leaned in, his lips brushed up against his shape, but then he stopped and looked around.

"Not here."

Bill trembled, his shape screamed out of need. The door was open, the room empty: the others were all gone, they would not be back soon... but Stanford was still moving away, his eyes kept watching the door.

Bill stroked his feathers and the human returned his eyes to him.

"Do you know a safe place where nobody can see us?"

Stanford's cheeks colored with a bright red. He looked down.

"Yes," he replied, embarrassed.

"Excellent," said Bill, "Then let's go."

Stanford nodded, his cheeks now red. He did not know that the human could change his color by himself: it was cute. And he should ask him how he did it.

Ford stood up and leaned over to put Bill on the ground. Bill swung on his legs, weakened by desire and quivering at the thought of kisses. He placed his feet firmly on the ground and managed to gain enough stability to take a step forward and fix his bow tie.

"We can go."

Stanford, red up to the ears, pushed his hands into the pockets and went out first, with Bill in tow.

* * *

 

It was an empty room that nobody used and that, apparently, Stanford had chosen as his own. There was not much, except for a pile of straw on the ground, a large blanket and two ion guns, one of which was disassembled.

"How frugal," Bill teased him. "You could ask for something more."

"I don’t need anything else." Stanford sat on the ground against the wall and Bill climbed on him immediately, gripping the hooks offered by his jacket, to reach his face. Stanford was silent, looking at him as if there was nothing else in that room, or in the whole world.

Bill lifted a hand to take off the bow tie and pressed Stanford's head against him.


	9. Zwischenzug

> _“Zwischenzug is a chess tactic in which a player, instead of playing the expected move, first interposes another move. Often this involves responding to a threat by posing an even greater threat, that the opponent must answer.”_

* * *

 

 

In the end, Ephie’s desire to go out had become so insistent that Ander had thrown away his papers during the meeting, declaring that " _no one is listening here except me, so let's do this damned trip to the surface to see the stars_ ".

And then they were resting on the grass, on top of a secluded hill in the middle of the rebel zone, watching the swirling sky above them.

Ford still had no idea how Shapes could see the stars so well behind all those lights and the masses of color, but Ephie already told him they had seen that sky for years. If Shapes were able to recognize the hours of the day from the change of light, even being able to see the stars had to be possible.

Willar was with them, along with another Semiliquid named Velas: apparently, they were the best intellectuals in the rebel group, besides the First Ones.

"Until last year, the Alabaster Constellation could be seen very well from here, now we're lucky if we can see the two brightest stars," said Willar, pointing south-west. "Did I ever tell you the legend about the alabaster chariot of the first warrior?"

"I don’t remember it."

"Me neither."

"Tell it, stories are always interesting!" Ephie encouraged him.

"That’s a very long story: it starts in the tenth year..."

"Tsch, first Ander was all angry for the meeting, now look how he’s listening," whispered Bill. He was resting next to Ford's ear, his voice barely audible compared to Willar's calm tone.

Ford tilted his head to the side and, amidst the figures on the grass, he found Ander’s orange shape: the Triangle was lying with his ankles crossed and both hands were peacefully resting on his shape, one on top of the other.

"The image of serenity," said Ford, barely moving his lips.

"He needs to relax more often." Ford felt small fingers intertwining in his hair. "I like this thing you can do, to bend your head sideways."

Ford looked at Bill. His black arm faded into the grass, the fingers in his hair invisible to another observer.

"You can see from the side?"

"Only with the eye." he chuckled. "If I wanted to turn around like you do, I would have to balance on one of my sides and I’d fall forward."

_He's really different._

Bill Cipher was able to stand on one side: in the Mindscape, everything could bend to fit his shape and Cipher took advantage of that, varying the space to take every possible pose, without being blocked by his triangular structure. He still remembered how they were swimming together, suspended in midair, while he laughed and Cipher looked at him, resting on one side, his legs slightly bent in a sensual pose and a hand that moved closer to his face, " _Tell me, Fordsy, what would you want me to do, now?_ ".

The thought pierced his chest, the memory was tinged with poison. A liar’s words, a delicious façade to hide all his deceptions. Cipher had destroyed his life.

"I really like your feathers too," he heard Bill whisper and the memory faded, bringing Ford back to the present, on the gray grass, under a colorful sky.

"It’s called hair," he replied.

"Oh, hair." The little hand moved up and down between his locks. "I like the name."

Bill did not even know what they were called. After all, he had seen only bird-beings covered with feathers and cat-beings covered in fur. Shapes had no hair of any kind. His hair resembled the only thing he had ever seen, namely the feathers of his rebel companions.

Cipher knew exactly what hair was. Cipher had seen millions of hair, he probably sat on thousands of heads of all geniuses in history. If he wanted, he could have told him the hair color of every single person he met, how long or short they were, what hairstyles they wore, how soft they were, " _although_ ," he would have added, " _none of them will ever match the softness of yours._ ".

"Can you see some stars?" Bill asked him. Willar's voice filled the spaces, creating a pleasant background between Bill’s question and his answer.

"No," admitted Ford. He heard Bill giggle.

"Two eyes and you don’t know how to use them." The small hand vanished from his hair and Ford heard the rustling of the grass, while Bill moved closer. He raised a hand and pointed a finger above them. "Look there, in the line between green and yellow: do you see that dot of light?"

Ford focused in that area and managed to see it: a little white light, which shone continuously in the diffused glow. It was like seeing a star in the middle of the day.

"I see it," he replied, with a smile.

"And the one there, in the green." Bill moved his finger to the south, tracing a line from the green-yellow border, inside the green. "That’s three meters in that direction. Can you see it?"

"Uh... that one?" Ford tried, pointing to a small light.

"More to the right."

"Right, right... oh, I found it."

"Now connect them to this one here." and pointed to a third light in the middle, but more to the east. "Do you see it?"

"I think..." he tried to find the light. "It's too bright."

"Focus where my finger is." Bill encouraged him, his finger stretched towards a specific point. "Only there."

Ford brought his attention to that point and, with great difficulty, he managed to identify the small bright light.

"I found it."

"Good," Bill praised him. "Can you connect them?"

Ford concentrated on the three dots: it took him a while to find the second one, but eventually he connected them. They formed a triangle and gave him a nostalgic twinge in his chest, by reminding him of the constellations he saw in Gravity Falls.

"William," he murmured.

"What?"

"In my Dimension there was a similar constellation," he said, turning to face Bill. "It was called William. And it was my favorite."

Bill lowered his hand. Ford felt it approach, touch his cheek, black fingers stroked his lips. He surrounded that hand with his, pressed it against his mouth and kissed it.

"... But what if that’s the _new base_ of the alabaster chariot?" asked Ephie, her question broke the low and regular rhythm of Willar's voice.

Ford left Bill's hand, which disappeared quickly through the grass. He looked back to the sky.

"Where?" asked Bill, in his best neutral tone.

"Here." Ephie pointed to the sky. "North-East."

What he was doing was wrong, Ford knew it well. He had a mission, a goal to be achieved at the cost of his life. His heart was blackened by sick memories.

But this Bill, this version so young and oblivious, attracted him like a moth to the light. He was not a ruler like Cipher, he did not read in his mind, he did not conduct every stage of the game. But he was passionate. He was demanding, tireless and he gave him everything, surrendering himself to Ford’s hands with ecstatic abandonment.

Plus, his form had the same sweetness, his limbs the same softness of silk against his lips and his moans made him shiver with pleasure, exactly as many years before.

Ford bit the inside of his lip. Despite the years, despite the revenge, despite the anger, he still succumbed to Bill’s charm. He wanted to hit himself for that weakness. It was already wrong when, alone and in a cold in an unknown Dimension, his mind wandered on memories of the past, when everything was perfect and happy and in the world there was nothing but him and his Muse. But reliving those moments, replaying those feelings with Bill was much, much worse.

"... Am I wrong or is that part new?"

"It's always the Opal Constellation, Kryptos. It's moved because it's autumn."

"I remembered the Opal was somewhere else..."

"Secant is always thirteen primes, that’s twenty-five."

In the peaceful alternation of voices, Ford felt Bill's hand move again, his fingers brushing his ear.

"I’ll show you my favorite constellation," he said cheerfully. "We call him _The big Eye_ and all the stars can be seen from here.” he pointed to something on Ford’s left. "Look there."

Ford looked at that small black hand, his finger stretched toward a point on the left. He put his own hand around it and brought it over his mouth, to lay a fleeting kiss on the palm. Bill chuckled, a delighted giggle that made his heart jump in the chest and lift the corners of his mouth.

He was still too weak.

* * *

 

 

The sky was still bright when Willar declared that it was getting late and it was time to return. For him, the sky was still the same, with the exact same colors, but the Shapes agreed with the Semiliquid, so Ford relied on their knowledge and followed them down the hill.

The trip seemed to have had the desired effect: everyone was walking at a good pace, still talking about formulas, theories and legends related to the stars. Willar and Velas were adding information about another constellation that had just appeared in the sky and their arms pointed in front of them, carelessly indicating something. Ford tried to focus his gaze on that area, but it was too vast to figure out where were the light they were talking about.

"It was really a beautiful day, don’t you think?"

Ford lowered his head and smiled at Ephie, who appeared beside him. The Line walked with a bounce in her steps, her eye sparkled brightly.

"Yes," Ford agreed, "We really needed that."

"True." she raised her eye toward the sky. "Years have passed since the last time we took a free afternoon, been together and chatted in peace. The war kept us busy," she joked bitterly.

"It's your duty," joked Ford as well. "You’re the First Ones, the great leaders of the rebellion."

"Oh, please, don’t you start with that," she replied, giving him a friendly punch against the shin. "You know that at the beginning Shapes knelt down, every time we passed?"

"Are you serious?" Ford held back a laughter.

"Dead serious, I swear. Now many of them stopped, but there’s still someone who get on his knees and, really, we would rather avoid that. Come on, it's embarrassing: we're just Shapes, like all the others."

"But you’re also the leaders of the rebellion and the intellectual elite."

She rubbed under her eye.

"I can’t deny that. But the idea is to extend our knowledge, once the war is over. We’ll let everyone know maths, physics and we’ll explain all the theories we’re creating, like mine about acceleration or Leder’s about particles."

"Weren’t you two working together?"

"We still are," she said, winking at him, "We’re just getting to the goal by taking two different paths."

"What would the goal be?"

"The transformation of matter," she explained. "With my acceleration formula and her theoretical basis on particle structure, we could establish future changes in matter over time, when they will occur and which parts of matter will invest."

Ford looked at her, eyes wide.

"It's a remarkable job," he said, admired. She giggled.

"We’re ambitious and don’t leave anything to the others to study," she joked. "They’re just a bunch of loafers, only good at having fun."

"I heard you!" Cotter said, from the front. Ephie laughed.

"Actually, me and Leder were the first to work on this topic," she admitted, turning to Ford. "Just like Cotter and Kryptos were the first to study the chemical aspect, Ander the physical one, and Myr the mathematical calculation."

"And Bill?"

Ephie twisted her fingers.

"Bill doesn’t study a single field," she tried to explain, "Bill studies _all_ fields. Anything you put in front of him." She gave a short nervous laugh. "It's unnerving, in a way. He doesn’t focus on anything, because he focuses on _everything_. And, sometimes, he even has moments of genius that we specialists don’t have."

_All-Knowing Eye._

"He’s hungry for knowledge."

"Exactly" another little laugh "Sometimes, I think it's just like he’s the essence of the intellectual: he wants to learn everything and know everything, he stores every piece of information and constantly looks for new ones."

_First intellectuals, then fighters._

_"I’m a Muse, Stanford, and it was your tireless pursuit of knowledge that caught my attention."_

"He was always like that," he murmured.

"What?"

"He helped me see the stars," answered Ford, louder. "I didn’t think I could do it, from here.”

"Awesome, you're learning to see like one of us!" said Ephie. "But, to be honest, I would like to know how _you_ see. How does it work with your two eyes? I don’t think you see as the bird-beings, since you have glasses. Or do you use them for something else?"

"I use them because I don’t see well from afar."

"So we can rule out bird and cat-beings, since they don’t have these problems," she answered. "So do you see like Semiliquids?"

"How do they see?"

"We can see at 360 degrees," answered Willar. "Our eyes can pass through our shape, so we can see both in front of us and behind us."

_Like chameleons_. Ford smiled.

"I'm sorry, but I have a fairly limited vision compared to yours," he answered. "The maximum to which I arrive is about 200 degrees horizontally, combined with peripheral vision, and approximately 130 degrees vertically."

"It's a lot," Willar said.

"But it's not perfect," he replied, "Especially the peripheral one: it's weak, when it comes to distinguishing details or shapes."

"Our vision doesn’t have this problem."

"Basically, we’re the ones with the worst vision?" Ephie asked.

"Those who see the worst are the Circles," Bill intervened, from the front, "They don’t even know where they put their weapons and lose them all the time! Am I wrong?" and raised his brand new gun, gained from last fight.

Sentences of approval rose around him.

"And don’t forget that their prisoners always disappear overnight," added Cotter.

"And their attacks are always headed in the wrong direction," Myr chuckled.

"And their allies always get lost, what a surprise."

"They all need a pair of glasses."

"Or even two!"

"But even in that case they wouldn’t be able to find us." When they reached the entrance to the underground base, Bill turned back. "We could even throw a wild party a few steps from their base, and they would head for the opposite direction!"

Giggles and sniggering accompanied them down the stairs and into the heart of the base. They walked down the hallway and entered the common room, still chuckling and nudging each other.

The common room was full of people and everyone turned to their entrance. Bill stopped in the doorway and spread his arms.

"Hey there!" he exclaimed, with his usual cheerful tone. "How are things going?"

Nobody answered, a dead silence fell into the packed room. Ford felt his chest tighten: all eyes were dark and frightened, tense.

_Something’s wrong._

"Bill..." a Pentagon approached the Triangle, grabbed his hand and dropped to his knees in front of him. Bill immediately tried to get him back on his feet.

"Hey, no, come on, you don’t need to. What’s happening?"

"What happened?" asked Ander, taking a step forward.

"They attacked," murmured a Line.

Silence fell again, more dense than before.

"Who?" Bill asked.

"The Circles. The south-east recon crew,” she explained, trembling.

"They were surrounded on every side.” the Pentagon on his knees had his eye wet with tears. "It was a trap. We couldn’t do anything.”

"Were you in the group?" asked Ander.

"No, we were checking nearby the remains of the city," the Line explained. "We were on a solo mission. Wh-when we saw those from the recon crew, we wanted to join them, but then..."

"We couldn’t do anything," repeated the Pentagon. "They sprang up everywhere. It was a targeted attack."

Bill looked at him, eye wide open. He blinked once.

"How many?" he asked, in a whisper.

"Thirty," the Line said, "The whole group. I-In a couple of minutes."

Ford felt his heart sink at those words. Thirty less rebels, in their already small ranks. He saw Ephie, beside him, open her eye wide in shock.

"We couldn’t do anything." the Pentagon was crying, still on his knees, clenching Bill’s hand. "We thought th... that it was better if we came back..."

"To say it. To warn everyone else..."

"They killed them and took their weapons." the Pentagon sobbed. "Forgive us for not helping them. Please forgive us."

"We wanted to do the best for all the rebels."

Bill brought his free hand to the Pentagon, and the Shape raised his moist eye over him.

"You did well to come back and tell us." he looked up the entire room and spoke in a louder voice, breaking the cloak of silence. "The Circles will pay for what they did. They still believe the world is always the same and that they’ll rule over us and our lives forever." He clenched his hand in a fist. "Well, the world _is_ changed and if they don’t get it, then we’ll make them get it! None of this will remain unpunished!"

Ford glanced across the crowd and, as if by magic, he saw the sad eyes light up again, all staring adoringly on the leader of the rebellion. The Pentagon that was holding his hand looked at Bill as if he were a living God.

"First, tomorrow morning we’ll organize the plan and decide together when we’ll attack," continued Bill, "For now, let the Circles believe they’ve won. Let them have fun. It’ll be even more satisfying to see them crawl, when we’ll make them pay with _their_ blood for _our_ blood!"

"Right!" yelled someone, from the center of the crowd. Semiliquids and bird-beings nodded, the Shapes straightened up.

"But rest now," Bill continued, calmly. He helped the Pentagon get back up. "Sleep. Eat. Heal. We can’t get any revenge, if you surrender yourself to the pain."

The Pentagon brought Bill's hand to his shape, in a last squeeze, and then left it. Myr stepped forward and accompanied both the Pentagon and the Line to the infirmary: the crowd opened like a sea to let them pass and some followed them, like longing spirits.

* * *

 

Ford dropped onto his improvised bed, with heavy heart.

Thirty rebels dead, thirty weapons lost. The weeping eye of the Pentagon erased the beautiful wandering of colors in the sky, the little stars of the constellations. That day could not have ended in a worse way.

A knock on the door dispersed his thoughts: he got up and went to open. Bill stood in the doorway, a golden shape in the darkness of the base.

"Can I stay with you tonight?"

Ford opened the door wider and moved aside, letting him in. Bill slipped inside and Ford quickly closed the door behind him.

The Triangle took off his hat and placed it next to the guns. Ford sat against the wall, both arms resting on his raised knees. Bill reached him, clung to his jacket and climbed up on him.

Instinctively, Ford helped the Triangle in his climb, by supporting his back with one hand. Once he reached his face, Bill passed a hand behind Ford’s neck, while the other stroked his cheek. Only then, he let out a long exhale.

Ford caressed his back with the fingertips. It was not electric and did not radiate heat like a little star: it was just smooth and warm, a soft warmth that suited the nocturnal penumbra.

"Are you angry?"

The hand on his cheek twitched. Slowly, it closed in a fist.

"I'm _furious_ ," Bill replied. His whole shape was shaking, for the effort to hold back his anger. "That _scum_ dared to touch _my_ rebels. They set a trap to kill them _all_."

Ford continued to stroke his back, up and down.

" _I_ am the one who sets traps," continued Bill, " _I_ make plans to kill those tyrants. _I_ am always a step ahead of them." he looked at Ford. " _I_ am the Queen of this game."

"I know."

"So how dare they? How dare they fight me?"

_"All of this is for nothing. Just give up, Sixer."_

Ford swallowed, felt the cold descend upon him. Memories - myriad of yellow eyes watching him, the night sky, his stumbling steps, the Twin Motel sign - surrounded him, covered his eyes, hiding the view of the present, dragging him into the past.

A hand rested on his cheek and that touch kept him from falling. Ford blinked: memories dispersed and he returned to his room, in a faraway Dimension, with Bill looking at him.

"We're the ones who are right," said Bill, stroking his cheek. "You haven’t seen what it was like before, but you have to believe me: before the war, this world was much worse than it is now. You couldn’t even _think_ of resting on the ground with other Shapes of a different social rank from yours, to talk about constellations. Lines didn’t know how to read or write and some couldn’t even _speak_ , when in the presence of too many Polygons."

Bill shivered with repressed anger again.

"I want to change all of this," he continued, "I want to create a better world, a freer one. A world where you can party and study what you want. In which Third Dimension is the truth and we’re all the same: Triangles, Hexagons, Semiliquids or humans." He moved towards Ford. "A world in which no one can tell us what to do."

Ford closed his eyes and moved his face towards him. Bill changed his eye into a mouth and his lips closed around Ford’s, fiery, passionate, greedy. The hand on his cheek pulled him closer, the one around his neck tightened his grip. Ford complied, pulling Bill against him, caressing his shape.

They parted and Bill raised his eyelids again. His eye was wet and clouded. He stroked Ford’s cheek again.

"Stanford..."

Ford put his hand on Bill's own and led it to his mouth. He kissed his fingertips, one at a time, then opened his lips, slid his tongue out and licked his palm.

Bill moaned with desire and that moan ran down his body, until it stopped between his legs. Ford licked his palm again, ran his tongue over his fingers, sucked them one by one. He reached Bill’s wrist, climbed with his tongue along his arm, his ears full of Bill's ecstatic sighs, his broken breaths, the passion with which he searched for more of him.

From his arm, he reached the golden surface and quickly left a kiss. Bill moaned, delighted; the hand on Ford’s neck climbed into his hair and pushed his head against him. _More_.

Ford left his hand, which slipped like the left in his hair. He kissed Bill again, enjoying every breath, every hold of those little fingers on his skin, the sweet metallic taste under his tongue. A black leg leaned on his shoulder, Bill pulled himself a little higher to give Ford’s mouth more surface to kiss.

He complied obediently, without forgetting a single fragment of that golden shape. He rubbed his nose against his bow tie and Bill laughed. A hand appeared, the fabric slipped away and Bill lowered himself, enough for Ford to kiss that place too: he did it and Bill's moan was pure bliss.

Holding Bill with one hand, Ford brought the other between his legs, to stroke the bulge in his pants. Each of Bill's moans awoke his body, made his lust stronger. He used his tongue, getting keener, passionate, desiring sighs, which added more fuel to the fire that Bill awakened inside him.

Despite the long years, despite the differences between the two Triangles, Bill Cipher still managed to make his body burn with passion without even touching him.

Bill moaned and Ford with him.

He was still _too damn_ weak.


	10. Counterattack

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mh, this is quite a long chapter if compared to the others. Anyway, here there will be a war scene at the beginning (with blood and death) and a romantic scene at the end. You're warned.  
> As always, if there are any errors, please tell me.  
> Hope you enjoy <3

Revenge was put into motion after two weeks.

The plan had been developed to the smallest detail by Ander, Leder and Myr, the three coldest minds among the First Ones. Ephie had tried to participate, but her every speech concluded with her suggestion to anticipate the plan. On the other hand, Cotter had nothing to say and all he did was counting and recounting rebels and weapons at their disposal, as if he could make others pop up out of nowhere.

His brother Kryptos, on the contrary, had repeatedly accompanied Bill to talk to the rebels. Together they had visited the two informers in the infirmary, answered to all others who had questions, consoled the fallen’s relatives that were still alive. Bill gave information and answers, talked about the phases of the plan, promised revenge. Kryptos just stood next to the Shapes and, with his mere presence, two kind words and one hand on the arm, managed to give some consolation.

"Kryptos does better than anyone else in these kind of things," Bill had explained to Ford one evening, while playing with his hair. "The rest of us are better at thinking, convincing and leading. He has a natural talent in comforting: probably because he grew up with someone as annoying as Cotter and has to deal with him all the time, but he has a patience of steel. I couldn’t take anybody else with me."

The plan was completed in the enlarged session, with all the leaders of the rebels present. Everyone got his say, small additions were made and they drafted the list of those who would participate, the weapons they would use and the position that each rebel would occupy in the great attack.

Bill only demanded to be in.

So they had gone to the pre-established place, moving each on its own, gray in the gray, invisible to each other.

Reached his cover, Ford raised himself on his arms and crouched behind the pile of rubble. He felt the comforting weight of the gun on his side and of the knife against his chest, both hidden behind the flaps of his jacket.

He spied in front of him, from a crack between two wood planks: the enemy group was five meters ahead. He counted a couple of horned monsters, a dozen ferret-beings and five or six lynx-mercenaries.

But above all there were Shapes. At least twenty Polygons, from the Heptagons up, with more and more sides, the shape more and more similar to that of a Circle.

And then there was him, a real Circle, recognizable by the proud expression and because other Shapes lowered their eye when they spoke to him. The Circle sat, while everyone else was moving to set up the camp, laying his eye now on a Polygon, now on another.

Ford turned his gaze to the left: it took a while, but he saw an eye appear in the gray dust, a dark pupil hidden behind a pair of fallen bricks. Bill caught his gaze and raised his gun.

Ford took the gun out from under his jacket, loaded it. He looked at Bill and nodded.

And the attack started.

Ford jumped up and fired, climbing over his shelter. A lynx-mercenary turned but Ford’s shot had already reached him straight between the eyes. The enemies, caught by surprise, tried to pull their weapons, but the first hail of gunfire hit them and they fell dead. The horned beings screamed and rushed against the approaching rebels, that were still shooting: a couple of monster fell, a third reached a Semiliquid, which cut his throat.

The enemies headed to them and the blades rose. Ford fired at another ferret-being, avoided a laser beam that grazed his head and aimed downward, at the Heptagon that had hit him: he had a dagger that came out of the center of his shape and blue cracks on his surface.

_Wha...?_

The Heptagon _cracked_ and blue blood spurted from his broken shape. The sides shattered, the whole structure collapsed and he fell to the ground, like shards of a broken plate. Ephie appeared behind him with knives in both hands. She met Ford’s gaze, smiled at him with her eye and turned to stab another Polygon.

The rebel Shapes filled the camp, much faster than him, leaving Ford to shoot at ferret-beings and mercenaries, to focus on their peers. On the other hand, the larger creatures aimed at Ford, the Semiliquids and the two bird-beings.

Ford killed two other ferret-beings. A lynx mercenary jumped on him and dragged Ford to the ground, in a chaos of guns and growls. He bent his head sideways just in time and the claws of the mercenary stuck to the ground: Ford put the hand in his jacket and, with a flash of steel, thrust the dagger’s blade into the creature's neck.

Hot blood rained down on him like a waterfall, forcing Ford to close his eyes. He threw the carcass of the lynx on his side and stood up, the knife slipping from his blood-covered hand. Another ferret-being, not far from him, was assaulted by three Lines: in a twirl of blades, two of them cut the ligaments of his knees, forcing him down to the ground, and the third Line cut his throat.

The screams of the enemies went out one after the other, under the fire and against the steel. Willar, on the opposite side of the camp, stabbed the last of the ferret-beings and his blood smeared the blue of the Semiliquid.

Ford walked into the field, among the remains of the Polygons scattered on the ground like fragments of white glass, dodging the bodies of the biggest enemies, blue blood and red blood that mixed giving color to the gray, looking for the faces of the other rebels, looking for Bill.

Then he saw him and held his breath.

Bill was neither covered with gray camouflage dust, nor with his usual bright yellow: he was red and blue and blood still dripped from his base, came down from the eye like big blue tears, covered his arms and the blade of the knife he held in his hand. He towered over a shape, which crawled on the ground beneath his foot.

Ford recognized it: it was the Circle he had seen before the attack, while he was sitting, haughty, waiting for his subordinates to set up the camp. Before his gray was immaculate, the edge of his shape gave off a glow of brilliant white. But at that moment, the gray was dirty with the blue blood of his soldiers, and any traces of condescension had vanished from the eye: he trembled under the foot of the leader of the rebellion, mumbling prayers and meaningless words.

Bill was not even listening to him. He raised his eye from the Circle’s trembling shape and met Ford's gaze.

In that eye there was no mercy, no fun, not even revenge. That was the eye on the other side of the portal, when Ford had turned, floating in midair, and had seen the King of the Nightmare Realm, sitting on his throne of optical illusions.

That was the eye of Bill Cipher.

A cold chill ran down his back and Ford shivered. For a moment, he was again a mere scientist, imprisoned in his house and in his mind, that avoided sleep and walked from one room to another during the wake, to escape from the eyes that followed him and the laughter that echoed everywhere. He was again a lost young man that fell through the portal and, when he turned around to look at the new world on the other side, he saw in front of him, the nightmarish form of the All-Seeing Eye.

"Please... please..." the Circle whimpered, "Please..."

Bill turned his eye away and brought it back to the shaking figure below him. He leaned over one knee, raised the knife and the Circle screamed.

His scream escalated as the blade pierced his eye and went off when blood began to gush out. Bill turned the knife into the wound: several cracks spread out from the eye and covered the Circle’s whole shape.

Bill stood up and pulled out the blade: the cracks widened, with the same sound of cracked glass, reached the edge and fractured it.

Only then, the glow of the Circle went out.

* * *

 

 

When they opened the door of the base, were greeted by a warm light, orange and yellow, as if a small sun had managed to enter there, passing through ground and walls. All the rebels of the base were present: they had gathered in the entrance, filled it and invaded the corridor, up to the common room. Their eyes were bright, as if a piece of that sun were in each of them.

Despite the crowd, they managed to go inside. Bill put one foot in front of the other and the crowd opened obediently, letting him pass with all of them that were following. The rebels reached out for them, caressed their clothes, the bloodstained figures, the weapons they still held in their hands. Light words flew in the air: some were questions, other prayers, other expressions of joy.

Ford swallowed and felt the ice block in his chest melt. He was hot there and did not realize how much he had suffered from the cold outside. That unexpected warmth, so soft and kind, settled on his shoulders and face, like a blanket. It blurred the visions of dead enemies with their throat cut, of the blood that came out, of the cracks that spread from the Circle’s eye and broke him. Even the blood on his hands and on his face, previously so cold, seemed to warm up a little.

They reached the common room and Bill stood on one of the tables. The whole base spread out into the room, Shapes swarmed and fill the room to the walls, while Semiliquids and bird-beings, since they were taller, remained at the edges and under the arches of the exits.

Once settled, the whole base sank into total silence. In that perfect stillness, Ford could hear the sound of his own breath.

Then Bill raised his arm. In his hand he still held the knife with which he had killed the Circle, the blade stained with blue blood. He held it up, to let everyone look at it.

"This is the blood of Harmon Deschel, Fourth General of the Circles!" he thundered.

And the base went _wild_.

* * *

 

"... and then I shot both of them." concluded Ford, for the umpteenth time.

The rebels who surrounded him were not yet tired and continued to stare at him with widened eyes, to sit around him, to go from him to others in order to hear other stories. A Square filled his teacup again.

"What did you do? From which side were you attacking?"

It was the fifth time they had asked the same question and the fifth time he had told what happened. Not like he had much choice: rebels had literally surrounded him, forced him to sit down, put a cup of hot tea in his hand and bombarded him with questions.

Obviously he had not been the only one: all of those who have been part of the attack team had been forced to sit down, be surrounded by admiration and served with something warm. Some of them, like Willar, had accepted everything calmly and, with the same tranquillity, had started to tell how events had taken place. Others, like Ephie, had embarked into long and articulated stories, miming the main scenes.

" ... and then _zac!_ , a long cut on the throat." Ephie was telling to her audience. She stood on the table and cut the air with one of her knives, receiving admiring comments from her spectators and some applause. Her sister Leder, that sat on the edge of the table, just rolled her eye.

Ford rubbed his fingers on the cup, enjoying the pleasant warmth of hot tea against his skin. Surrounded by adoring Shapes, bird-beings that smiled friendly and Semiliquids with their kind eyes, the battlefield seemed thousand of Dimensions away. The red and blue ground, covered with broken Shapes, disappeared in front of the amber background of his cup of tea. He took a sip and its warmth came down to his stomach, warming him up from the inside.

He turned his gaze back at the common room. The rebels who took part in the attack stood out like lighthouses in the middle of the sea, planets around which the fans orbited. And, among all those planets, Bill was undoubtedly the sun: he sat on the central table, cross-legged, surrounded by the largest group of Shapes, bird-beings and Semiliquids. He no longer held the knife in his hand, but it was on the table in front of him and the rebels looked at it with admiration, almost like if it was a relic.

Bill was laughing, while telling how he had killed the Circle, and his words were accompanied with gestures. His eye was no longer open and fixed, with the vertical, paper-thin pupil: it had lost the dark, icy terror that Ford had seen inside it on the battlefield and that had made him shiver. He was no longer Bill Cipher, but just Bill, cheerful and lively as always.

Ford sighed, relieved.

"Tell us," a Line urged him. "What did you do in the attack?"

Ford returned the attention to his audience and told his story again.

* * *

 

The crowd _loved_ them.

It must have been hours he was talking, since Bill felt his throat dry. But the rebels, _his_ rebels, were still there and still hanging from his lips, still wanted to hear him talk and talk about how he had killed Deschel, how that pathetic Circle had crawled and begged for mercy, how no enemy had survived and how their weapons had all been taken.

"I'd say it's enough for today," he heard Leder's voice. He looked up and saw her standing, a hand on Ephie's arm. "It was a really long day for everyone and she has to rest," she added, pointing to her sister. "Enough stories for today."

After emanating the sisterly decree, she came down from the table with Ephie and, with her sister's hand still firmly wrapped around hers, Leder took her out of the room.

 _She worries too much_ , Bill wanted to say. But actually, now that he thought about it, his arms and legs were heavier from the fatigue of the battle and talking for hours had made him feel tired. Also, he was covered in dried blood. _Ugh_.

"Leder’s got a point," he admitted, in a casual tone. The rebels agreed, they exchanged glances and, little by little, flowed towards the exit in small groups.

His rebels were really intuitive.

"I agree too." Willar stood up. "I’ll get cleaned up and rest. See you tomorrow."

"I think you need to get cleaned too." Myr sat on the edge of the table, next to Bill. "Or you gave up the yellow and prefer like this? You look very mature." he teased him.

"Are you kidding me?" Bill scraped away some dried blood from his surface: the yellow below was all scratched. "Ugh, even the color is ruined."

"Oh my, real problems," Myr replied. " Which will be the next drama, who finished your favorite flowers for tea?"

Bill gave him a push, laughing.

"You can joke all you want," he said, "But if those flowers finish, I’ll send you to look for them."

"You’d never do it, you love me too much."

"It works only if Ephie says so."

"… Damn."

"I’m leaving too." Ander stood up with difficulty, a hand on the side. "It's late. Bill, I think there’s still some color in the creation room."

"I’m leaving too." Myr turned to Bill. "Do you need a hand?"

"Don't worry, you can go." Bill stood up. "Ugh, this blood is awful. First I’ll take a bath and for the color I'll see later." he looked around: Stanford and Velas of Semiliquids were still sitting. Velas was crossed by a strip of red blood and Stanford's face was covered in dried blood.

"You two," called them, both. He pointed  at the exit with his thumb. "Are you going to wash up?" his eye focused on Stanford.

The human beat his eyelashes. He left the cup on the table and stood up slowly, rubbing his back.

"I'm going," he announced. He said goodbye to the last few rebels and bowed his head towards him, as a sign of goodbye. When he raised his eyes again, Bill saw them glow with the usual flame.

_He understood._

Ford went out.

"I'm going later," he heard Velas say.

"Suit yourself." Bill slid off the table. He raised one arm towards the others. "See you tomorrow."

"See you tomorrow."

"See ya."

The other’s voices accompanied him to the exit. Bill walked under the archway, down the hallway and turned the corner: Stanford was there, waiting for him.

He was _really_ intuitive.

Bill gave him a smile, grabbed a corner of his jacket and pulled him forward.

"Come with me."

Stanford followed him, without questions. Bill led him past the infirmary, down the stairs leading to the deepest room, dug into the ground.

When he reached the double door, Bill pushed them and stepped into the creation room. He turned back: as expected, Stanford looked around curiously, his eyes ran over the row of tables, each with a mirror and a tub full of water, heated by the embers below.

"This is the creation room," Bill explained to him, "Here we create color."

The human raised both eyebrows.

"Here?"

"There." Bill waved a hand to the left, to the part of the room hidden behind the screen. "But, before going there, we have to clean up here. Pick a basin."

Stanford sat down in front of the nearest one and plunged a finger into the water.

"It’s hot."

"They lit the embers before." Bill moved to a sink on the opposite side and climbed the edge of the table. He took off the bow tie and immersed himself in the tub up to the tip, letting the heat cover him. He re-emerged and sighed, relaxed, watching the red and blue that colored the water, crossed by trickles of yellow.

Behind him, he felt the water splash, a rubbing sound. Stanford was getting clean.

"Is there anyone else here?"

"Not now," Bill replied. He rubbed his arms, clearing them of the dried blood. "Usually, there's nobody there. If someone needs color, comes here, heats the embers, gets cleaned and then goes to the other side of the room to renew the color."

"By itself?"

"Sure. We have taught everyone how to make color: if someone wants, takes the ingredients and creates it. But some are better than others, so it happens that the best one produces color and then everyone else uses it."

"Who is the best one?"

"Ander," he admitted. "He was the first to discover the basic ingredient and the colors he creates are always the brightest."

Bill turned around, basking in the hot water. Stanford had his back turned and was leaning over the sink, throwing water on his face.

"This room is deep down the base, because here we’re far from other noises and we can create better," said Bill. "But especially for defense. The Circles know the technique to create color, but they never told it to their allies. So, if the base were ever attacked, this camera would be sealed and destroyed, before the Polygons can even find out that exists."

"Wow," commented Stanford. "This color thing is serious for you all."

"More than serious." Bill put his arms on the edge of the basin. "The Circles have denied us color for millennia. Millions of Shapes have spent their lives only by seeing white, black and gray, when they could’ve seen millions of different tones. Two hundred years ago there was an attempt to introduce the color, but the proposal was rejected and the chromatists executed." he clenched his hands into fists. "We won’t let them take away the color from us again."

"They could always find out the technique, by torturing a rebel until it spoke."

Bill gave him a cold laugh.

"There’s an agreement," he replied, "If a rebel ends up prisoner, it’s alone, there’s no chance to bring up reinforcements and a Polygon asks about the color, the rebel will commit suicide. It has already happened four times since the war started and nobody betrayed us."

Stanford straightened up.

"No one told me about this agreement."

"It doesn’t include other species," replied Bill, "Semiliquids, bird and cat-beings have different colors on their own." he brushed the edge of the basin with his fingers. "And you too have a lot of different colors on yourself. And they're yours, since you do not have to renew them."

Stanford rubbed his face one last time and started to turn around.

"Stop."

Ford obeyed and froze.

"What happens?"

Bill hesitated. He felt heat rise in fumes around him, warming the water even more.

"I don’t have the yellow on," he admitted, finally. "If you prefer, you can go out and we’ll see later, when I'll be colored again. Or you can stay. But ... it's not that great. It isn’t as nice to see as the yellow."

Stanford turned and Bill felt himself burn of embarrassment.

"I told you so," he replied, cramming words together. "It isn’t good to see. It's not like yellow. Yellow is fantastic, while _this_ is so _bland_ and _common_. On the other hand, yellow is beautiful, I chose it because it was the brightest and was burning my eye, but I couldn’t look away, it was..."

Stanford moved closer, touched Bill’s shape with his fingers and all the words went out, as if Ford had pressed a switch. His two eyes looked at him, with amazement, with attention, as if he were looking for something of him in that pathetic, miserable gray.

 _He doesn’t like me_. The terrible thought stabbed him in the center of the shape. _It's not like seeing me yellow. When I’m like this, I don’t have anything strange or original._

Ford swallowed, opened his lips. He looked at him again with his melancholy gaze.

"It doesn’t matter the color," he said, "I think you’re beautiful anyway."

The terrible thoughts faded away, evaporated into the fumes of heat that surrounded him. Bill moved to the center of the basin, giggling nervously, and then rubbed over his eye.

"So, am I okay? Am I clean? Do I still have blood or color on me?"

"You’re okay."

"Good." he clung to the edge of the basin. "Uhm... could you...?" and looked at the towel.

Ford gave it to him and Bill wrapped himself in it. With the fabric on, he climbed down from the sink and moved towards the screen. He turned to look at Stanford.

"Come," he invited him.

Behind the screen, there was the creation table, with all jars lined up and a brush near each one of them. Bill climbed onto the table and scanned the gray jars, running a hand over the labels with the names of each color.

Yellow was the last one. Bill tried to unscrew the lid, Ford took the hint and helped him, six more fingers that turned the lid with surprising speed. He removed the top and leaned forward to see.

Bill looked inside as well: the jar was almost empty, but there were still at least five inches of bright yellow, which brightened the dark walls of the jar from inside. It was enough.

He spread the towel on the table, took one of the brushes and dipped it in the color: the gray bristles lit up. He took off the extra color, turned the brush towards him and painted a large stripe on the lower part of his shape. The dull gray disappeared beneath the dazzling glow of yellow, and Bill gave a satisfied sigh. Good, he already felt more like himself.

From the right corner, he reached the top with the brush. He closed his eye and painted a strip of color on the eyelid, then descended again to the opposite corner. He felt the color dry and opened his eye again.

Stanford was in front of him, looking at his work with great interest. His eyes were wide, the pupils followed his every gesture, mesmerized. He was on his knees and only his hands were resting on the surface of the table, as if he were afraid of occupying more space. It was lovely to see that shyness, which contrasted with the fire that burned within him.

Bill dipped the brush again and covered the last triangle of gray he had left. The color dried immediately, becoming like a second layer of surface. Bill passed his hand over it: the yellow was bright and it covered perfectly, without even allowing a glimpse of the gray’s shadow. Clearly it was Ander's work: his yellow was the best and it never needed a second layer.

 _Perfect_.

"Do you want to help me?" Bill raised the brush to Ford. "The back is more difficult to paint."

Stanford blinked, surprised, and straightened up.

"O... ok."

He took the brush between his fingers. Bill gave him his back and sat down on the towel. He felt tingly along the arms and behind the eye. He had never been at the mercy of someone, from behind, leaving his pathetic gray back visible. It was _strange_ , it was _intriguing_ to sit there and wait, without knowing what Stanford was exactly doing, how, when he’ll...

The delicate touch of the bristles caught him by surprise and broke his breath. The brush descended from the top to the base with the lightness of a feather, touching him in a long caress.

He did not expect it that way. Considering how big were Ford’s hands and with how much energy they held the gun, he would have expected a touch much more decisive and rough. Instead Stanford held the brush like an artist, as if he had spent his life drawing. His movements were silk caresses, the bristles as gentle as his fingers, like when he held him close to his face and stroked him between kisses.

Bill squinted his eye. It was delicious.

"I never let myself be colored by anyone," he said.

And it was true. The act of coloring was too intimate, too personal to share. The color was sacred and its use was a hundred times more.

"I'm grateful," answered Stanford in a low voice, with that deep tone that made him shiver all over, "For letting me do it."

And again, as if he could not help it:

"You're beautiful."

Bill sighed, ecstatic. How did that human always say the right thing at the right time? How did he ignite him with desire, even with the simple touch of a brush? Putting color on was something that he always did, it was routine.

Yet, made by Stanford, it became something more. Just as the simple touch became fire if made by him, even putting color had become a sensual act, a game in which Ford surprised him with brushstrokes that started from different areas, that caressed him, teased him.

"Raise your arms," he asked softly. Bill lifted them, feeling the gentle rustle of the brush along the side and, at the same time, the concentrated breath of Stanford behind him. A tremor ran through his shape.

Stanford continued his work along the sides, then lowered the brush and lightly passed his fingers on his back, to make sure it was dry. That delicate touch rekindled the fiery flowers and Bill moaned, delighted. A hand of Stanford surrounded one of his that was still raised, his fingers so big and so kind were like an anchor for him.

Bill arched as far as possible, offering his back to Stanford. And finally he was rewarded with a kiss of fire in the middle.

The other raised hand found Ford's head, his hair so soft. Bill closed his eye, feeling how the flowers of fire blossomed on him, at every contact of Stanford's mouth on his surface. He gripped Stanford's fingers with one hand, the other wandered in his hair.

He gasped, delighted. It was absurd how Ford’s mouth always managed to light him up, awakening his entire shape as if it were the first time. He believed he would get used to it, that the fire would be quieted. Instead the fire burned harder, with every kiss of Ford blossomed more passion, they made him want to touch his hair even more, grip his hands, his face, his mouth...

Ford kissed the corner and his lips caressed the side. That fleeting touch extinguished all thoughts and a surprised little moan escaped from Bill, which opened his eye wide.

Stanford leaned down again and ran his lips along the side.

It was not like the fiery kisses or the hot chills. It was like lightning, as if electrical discharges started from the whole side and covered his entire shape. Bill sobbed with pleasure and leaned as much as possible, trying to offer to that incredible mouth more space, more of him to try, to awaken other feelings. Heck, how _many_ others could a Shape feel?!

Ford left his hand and brought his twelve, so skilled fingers on Bill’s front surface, then pulled him toward his lips. Bill plunged his other hand too into the man’s soft hair and closed his eye, savoring those delicious discharges that ran through him.

Ford passed by on the other side and the discharges started again, delightful in their power, making Bill feel like the sky, like a tree struck by a thousand lightnings, alive as he had never been before.

He sighed, ecstatic, and tightened his grip around Stanford's hair.

"Continue..." he moaned.

And Stanford, obediently, continued.


	11. Queen rook

> _“The term refers to the rook that is on the queenside of the board.”_

 

"No one will wonder where are you going to sleep every night?" Ford asked him.

They were both on the human’s bed. Stanford was resting on his side, Bill sat in front of his face. One of Ford’s arm was folded under his head, the other was leaning between the two of them, palm down and fingers relaxed. Bill was tracing his fingers over Ford’s, caressing his hand with lightweight touches. The hat and bow tie were abandoned in a corner, along with Ford's scarf.

"No one enters my room," Bill replied. "I'm old enough to not need curfew anymore and mommy to check on me."

The two eyes of the human lowered. Bill liked how Ford’s eyebrows wrinkled when he was deep in his thoughts.

"Speaking of that..." Ford raised his pupils back on him. "I'm sorry for your parents. Were you close?"

Bill blinked.

"Who told you about my parents?"

"I’m the one who asked," Ford answered immediately. "She didn’t tell me on her own accord. I was the one who asked directly about you. I was curious."

A pleasant tingling ran through his shape. Bill put his whole hand on Ford's and stroked it down to his fingers.

"Did you want to know more about me?" he asked, battling his eyelashes.

Those shy and elusive eyes again.

"Yes."

He was really _too cute_.

"I wasn’t very close to them," Bill replied, with a shrug. "My mother was a Woman, so she couldn’t read nor write and all she did was crying. She cried for everything, whether she was happy or sad. My father, on the other hand, was a Equilateral, that means a perfect Merchant: he went to the shop every day and visited the most loyal customers during the weekend." his tone became more cheerful. "That's how I met Ander, you know? He was a longtime customer of my father and a friend. When Dad went to visit him, I always came too: I liked to go to his library and read the books he had."

Memories overlapped: his father’s gray shape, Ander on the other side of the table, the bookcase that seemed colossal in his eye of little Shape, the strange books that hinted at something mysterious and incomprehensible.

"When I was little, I always had to stay in the same room with them, but growing up I was allowed to wander alone," he laughed. "I got into trouble right away, snooping in Ander’s private library."

Stanford's mouth bent into a smile: a gentle, melancholic smile, with one corner of the mouth more raised than the other.

"Hunger for knowledge."

"You have no idea," Bill agreed. "I was curious to see Ander's personal tastes too. In the studio there were just boring books about his work: he had to read something else."

"Did you find something special?"

"I found forbidden books," he revealed, excited, "About color, the Third Dimension, the Theory of Light. I didn’t know anything about all those things yet, but I was ready to devour entire volumes. Except that Ander caught me."

"He got angry?"

"He was more frightened." Bill rolled his eye. "He was afraid of what would’ve happened if someone found out, because those books were dangerous and if I said a word, it would’ve been serious trouble, and so on. But he was just being ridiculously paranoid: he had me after " _dangerous books_ "."

Another smile.

"Obviously."

"And so I asked to know more." Bill lifted a finger under the eye. "In exchange for my silence. I told my parents I was going to Ander to study, which wasn’t a lie: I would’ve even brought some books home, but Ander was paranoid and didn’t want the books to leave his house, because I could lose them and someone could see them..."

"He was cautious."

Bill gave him a friendly slap on the hand.

"Not you too!" he chuckled. "It took Ander _three years_ to tell me he held secret meetings, with other intellectuals who knew the truth. His excuse was that he was afraid I accidently might reveal the truth to my parents, or worse, to some Polygon. Like I was still a child!"

"How old were you?"

"Nineteen."

Ford held back a small laugh.

"You _really_ were a child."

"Ephie was my age and she attended meetings for two years already," said Bill, "But she had Leder and, as protective as she is, at least she’s also a permissive sister and let her do things. Even Kryptos joined the group a year before me, despite a brother like Cotter. Instead, I got a paranoid like Ander."

"He was worried about you."

"I needed just one thing." Bill leaned towards Ford. "More knowledge. Books weren’t enough for me anymore: literature was scarce, but the forbidden one in particular. I continued to mull over the same thoughts. I needed to talk with other Shapes, create new ideas and formulate new theories, in order to test, re-elaborate, discuss again and confirm them."

"Joining the group helped you." It was not a question.

"The Equation of Light you saw," Bill told him, "Ephie and Leder developed it, starting from a basic formula we created together during one of our meetings. Then they resumed it, thought about and refined it.”

Ford looked at him, as if he was reflecting about something. He lifted the little finger and moved it up and down against Bill, caressing his shape.

"What do you like to study?" asked Ford. "Do you have a favorite topic?"

Bill grasped that finger with one hand, stroked it with his eyelashes.

"What do you think?"

"I don’t think you have a favourite topic." his tone became melancholic again. "I think you like _all_ the knowledge. You just love to know everything."

Bill changed his eye into a mouth and kissed  his little finger. Then opened his eyelids.

"Exactly." he smiled. "What about you?"

Ford lifted his whole hand and turned it around, to rest his warm palm on Bill.

"I like to learn."

* * *

 

"I’m curious about your shape."

"I am about yours." Bill let his hand roam down from Stanford's ear to his neck. Prying fingers caressed the edge of his jacket. "Are all human beings as big as you?"

"There are also smaller ones," he explained. "When they born, they’re usually about fifty centimeters long."

Bill chuckled.

"The smallest human remains larger than an adult Shape." he passed his fingers along the edge of the jacket and put his hands inside. Ford took the hint and took it off.

"Mmmmh," said Bill, sliding both hands down his chest. "You're warm."

"Th... thirty-seven degrees Celsius." his voice cracked, when he felt that gentle, delicate, _familiar_ touch on himself. "And for Shapes, what’s the...?"

"Forty, on average." Bill put his feet on Ford’s thigh and reached out for him, clinging to his shirt. He changed his eye into a mouth and kissed Ford on the Adam's apple. His hands went up to his neck, reached the edge of the sweater and a finger slipped inside. Bill broke away, with a small, surprised gasp.

"Oh?" he let another finger slip over the edge. "So this _isn’t_ your surface!"

"Uhm, no." Ford rubbed a sleeve. "This is a sweater."

The Triangle frowned, confused.

"It's something to cover yourself."

"You have the jacket."

"It’s not enough." Ford brought a hand on himself. "I haven’t feathers or fur to cover myself from the cold, I need something more." he felt an embarrassing warmth rising up to his cheeks. "And it's for decency too, I can’t go around naked."

"Oooh." Bill's eye widened. "So it’s the same as for Shapes! The only difference is that, while a bow tie or a tie is enough for a Shape, a human needs something bigger, to cover a larger surface!"

"So that's why you have a bow tie?" Ford raised an eyebrow. "Out of respect for decency?"

"No, because I'm a high-class Triangle." Bill tickled the base of his neck. "And because I like to feel it slip away, when you untie it." he added, softly.

Ford leaned toward him, a hand on Bill’s back to keep him from falling backwards. The small black hands were on Ford’s cheeks in a moment, directing him to the lips that awaited him, eager and passionate.

"And what about Women?" Ford asked, when they broke the kiss. "They have nothing on."

"They’re _Lines_ , it's different," Bill explained, as if it were obvious. "Their surface is reduced, so they don’t need to cover it with something: it would only make them wider and prevent them from moving. Every now and then they put a brooch, but only for special occasions or when they’re certain they’ll remain still for most of the time."

His hands trailed down Ford’s cheeks to his neck, leaving fire in their wake. With one hand, Bill spread the edge of the sweater and slipped the other inside to touch his skin. He gave a murmur of appreciation.

" _Now_ I can feel the thirty-seven degrees."

Ford blushed. He grabbed Bill by his sides, pulled him aside and laid him down. Bill reacted with a small, indignant scream and made to climb up his legs, but stopped as soon as Ford grabbed the end of the shirt and pulled it off his head.

When his sight was free again from the black fabric, the first thing Ford saw was Bill's yellow, his shape reaching for him, his eye wide open and curious. The eyebrow bent, making him frown.

"You said you didn’t have fur," Bill accused him, alternating his gaze from his face to the chest.

"It's not enough for the cold," Ford justified himself, embarrassed.

Bill climbed back on his legs and brought both hands on his chest, sinking them in the fuzz. His touch was hot, his fingers soft like silk. The spark of power was missing, but the feeling was identical.

"It’s not as soft as the hair," remarked Bill, moving his hands in the chest hair.

"It's a different kind."

A giggle.

"Two different types of fur." his hands went up to his neck. "And areas that lack it. You’re really a weird creature, Stanford."

The echo of similar words, too similar and too familiar, whispered in his ears. Ford looked at him, at the little triangular creature, covered with gold paint, without demonic powers, but endowed with the same, delightful charm.

"You too."

Bill's eye shone with joy, his whole shape seemed to glow and shine, as if he could emit light like Cipher. His gaze softened, melting into an adoring expression.

_He even loves the same compliments._

The small black hands slid behind his head. Bill rose on his toes, his lips brushed against Ford's.

And Ford kissed him, ran a hand over his back and held Bill against him, the triangular shape against his chest. Bill let out a satisfied moan, rubbing against Ford: his shape was warm and smooth and burned like fire, burned his whole body, awakening his excitement.

They parted from the kiss, Bill panting and hotter than usual. His hands returned to Ford's chest.

"Shape against shape it’s a lot more intense," he murmured warmly against his skin.

"Body," Ford corrected him, in a whisper, "It's called “ _body_ ”."

"And the surface? How do you call it?"

"Skin."

"Skin," repeated Bill. "It's strange." he looked at him with a half-closed eye. "I like it."

Ford continued to stroke his back. He leaned over to kiss him and Bill held him tight again, his hands clambering on his shoulders, warm fingertips rubbing against bare skin. That pleasant contact made his senses shudder and Ford sank his tongue into Bill’s mouth, getting ecstatic moans from his lover.

Holding him tight against his body, Ford kissed him all night.

* * *

 

"Tell me about the Dimensions you saw," Bill asked him one evening, when they were lying together on Ford's bed.

Bill looked at the ceiling, flat on his back. Ford was on one side, propped on his left arm to keep himself up. Bill's black hand was moving up and down Ford’s arm, in a placid caress that warmed him inside, despite being without a shirt.

"There's one in which I've been for a whole year," he began. "It was the fifth or sixth I’ve visited. It was entirely covered in water and cities were built on circular blue rock platforms rising from the sea. At first I thought they were islands, but they told me that those platforms were like icebergs."

"What are icebergs?"

"They’re huge masses of ice that drift in the sea," he explained. "A small part is visible above the surface of the water, while the remaining 90 percent is underwater."

"And they built cities on ice?"

"It hadn’t exactly the same structure of ice," Ford replied. "I had permission to study a platform’s edge: they were made of a material I’d never seen, similar to silicon, but with the density of ice. They called it _yrlan_."

"So they carved the yrlan and built cities above it," deduced Bill. "And how did they connect them?"

"Bridges," he answered, "Simple bridges of an elastic metal they had artificially created."

Bill's eye widened.

"They _created_ an element?!"

"Yes. Central authority invested 50% of its interests in research."

"And the other 50%?"

"In city maintenance."

Bill closed his eye and gave a long satisfied breath.

"No wars," he said, in a dreamy tone. "Only research."

"They didn’t need to fight," Ford told him. "The inhabitants were tied to a single collective mind, which reassured and soothed them. They lived in peace, welcoming all the interdimensional travelers: if a scholar arrived, they let him study. If someone armed or violent arrived, they took off its weapons and made it part of the hivemind."

Bill opened his eye and looked at him.

"Why did you left?"

Ford tightened his lips and lowered his eyes. He thought back to the capital, the gardens covered with white flowers, the blue rocks, the way the collective mind spoke to him, passing from one inhabitant's mouth to another. He thought back to his soft bed, the stars, the constellation William that was visible in that Dimension and that reminded him every night that this was not a holiday, that beyond that black sky and that peaceful world there was the whirling chaos of the Nightmare Realm.

"I was a wanted man." he closed one hand into a fist. "I had a job to do."

Bill's hand slid down his arm again, reached for his hand and intertwined his fingers with Ford’s.

"I'm glad you left," he said, "Because then you came to me."

Ford moved on top of him, resting his weight on both arms, his face at the same height as Bill. The small hands were again on his cheeks, the eye narrowed, the long black eyelashes caressed the tip of his nose.

He had visited Dimensions million miles away, escaping further and further, with the thought of revenge seared into his mind. And he had gone so far, to come back into his arms.

_I've never really escaped from you._

"It would’ve happened," said Ford, bringing his lips to him. "We were destined to meet."

_Again._

Bill sighed in delight, as Ford kissed him in the middle of the shape. Bill clung to his face, asking for more, and Ford complied, crushing him with the weight of his kisses, with the warmth of his tongue, letting those hands run into his hair, letting Bill wrap his legs around his neck, holding him there, in that possessive and familiar embrace.

And there, tightened again in those arms, Ford felt weaker than ever.


	12. Bind

> _“In chess terms, a bind is a strong grip on a position that is difficult for the opponent to break.”_

* * *

 

Bill drummed his fingers on the crossed legs, his gaze focused on the main entrance of the common room.

"What are you worried about?" Ephie leaned against the table he was sitting on. "We organized the plan and everyone agreed. Not even Ander objected. They’ll all come home."

He kept his gaze on the entrance.

"I should be there with them."

"You can’t go fighting anytime you want," the Line replied. "This time it was Cotter and Myr's turn. It’s been a long time since they went out."

Bill waved his fingers in midair, trying unsuccessfully to articulate an answer. At the end, he gave a frustrated groan.

"But this wait is _frustrating_!" he snapped. "Have they done? Are they coming back already?"

_And what's Stanford doing?_

He let his arms fall back. He still saw Ford stand up and volunteer to take part in the attack. It was a considered choice, he had said. He could fight and, thanks to his size, he could protect others. And then he and Bill could not risk to be seen too much together. Was not already too strange, that he participated only in battles in which there was Bill? And that they were together everywhere, from meetings to dinner, separated by just a couple of people?

No, Bill had told him, there was nothing strange. It was normal. For the same reason, he should have been in love with Ephie, since he spent time discussing science with her and approved all her ideas.

But Stanford had smiled, looking at him with those melancholic eyes. He had bent down, caught Bill in a breath-taking kiss, and left.

And now Bill was there, waiting for that stubborn and elusive human to come back in one piece.

"Careful, your Queen side’s showing," Ephie teased him. "Don’t worry, your pawns will return to the base soon and you'll be able to lay your eye on everyone again."

Bill turned to her, ready with a comeback, when shouts reached them inside the common room.

"They're back!"

Ephie turned, Bill stood up. Shouts and voices came closer, other rebels entered from the arches, attracted by the confusion. Ander approached their table, followed by Kryptos and Leder.

The members of the expedition entered little by little, accompanied by a handful of other Shapes and bird-beings. Myr was in the lead, with a gun in each hand; his purple shape was stained with blue blood.

Polygon's blood.

The Pentagon met Bill's gaze and curved his eye in a sharp smile. He raised both guns.

"It was a success!"

Rebels answered with a roar of cheers, yells, questions. Bill held out a hand to Myr, helping him get on the table. Cotter came forward, surrounded by the cheering crowd and followed by Pluma: the general of bird-beings held an ionic machine gun in his hands.

"Took from the enemies!" declared Cotter, with his most satisfied tone. "The guy didn’t want to give it."

"I pulled it from his corpse’s fingers!" said Pluma, accompanying the words with one of his calls for victory.

Everyone answered with cheers of joy. Bill gave a friendly punch at Myr and held out his hand to Cotter to help him climb.

When the Square was on the table too, in the joyful chaos of victory, Bill saw the soft head of Stanford rise behind Pluma: he was smiling, his face still half-covered with dust, the jacket stained with red and blue blood. His face was whole, his hands too.

Bill gave a slight sigh of relief.

"Here comes the best part!" Myr exclaimed, diverting the general attention on himself. "We’ve taken General Delix."

Bill widened his eye.

"Really?"

"And…"

"And?"

"And…"

"And what? Talk!"

Myr chuckled, keeping the tension high.

"And he confessed," he spelt out, "What’s the new route they’re using to bring arms to the south."

"They’ll send them in a month!" added Cotter.

"There will be only ten Polygons and two lynx-mercenaries."

"They don’t suspect _anything._ "

"Two whole crates of weapons!"

"And, to guide the expedition, there’ll be Turlan Wehls." in the total silence, only Myr’s voice stood up. "The Chief Circle himself."

An unbelieving silence covered the whole base, gathered in the common room.

Then Bill screamed and everyone yelled with him.

" _FINALLY_!"

"THE CHIEF CIRCLE HIMSELF?!" screamed Ephie. "I CAN’T BELIEVE IT!"

"IT’S BEEN _YEARS_ SINCE HE CAME OUT!"

"I KNOW!" Myr screamed in turn. "IT’S OUR CHANCE!"

"WEHLS WILL SHOW HIMSELF!"

"TURLAN WEHLS!"

" _I CAN’T BELIEVE IT!_ "

Voices filled the room, exploded all around, became enthusiastic cheers. Bill brought both hands over his eye: he felt dizzy, his legs barely holding him up. Turlan Wehls, the Chief Circle, the supreme leader of the tyrants, the one who had not been seen for five years, would leave the Fortress to go south, accompanied by a miserable escort, for a path that he thought was still a secret.

 _Just an attack_. The thought swept over him like a wave. A single attack was enough to kill the enemy leader.

Within a month, they could end the war.

Bill turned to look at the chaotic and jubilant sea of rebels. Shapes, bird-beings and Semiliquids celebrated together, embracing each other, raising their arms and feathers, drunk with joy. He felt drunk too, the base’s colours were more vivid, the whole world seemed to rotate around him at double speed.

And, in that lively and festive chaos, the only fixed point was Stanford, who smiled and clapped, sharing the joy of the others. His eyes shone with happiness, his face was lit by a smile, his hair lifted in a ruffled wave. He met his gaze and Bill felt himself drawn from the center of his shape, as if Stanford were a magnet and he was a needle. He wanted to take a run toward him, grab his jacket, throw him on the ground and kiss him furiously, there, ignoring the others, holding that face in his hands, savoring that soft skin against him.

Ephie jumped on him and tackled Bill in such a sudden hug that he lost his balance and looked away from Stanford. He fell down and she stood up, laughing with drunken joy.

"Sorry, sorry, but I still can’t believe it!" she held out a hand, to help him get up. "Turlan Wehls! Can you believe this?"

" _That_ was a good attack!" Ander cheered. “Good job!” he gave Myr a pat so strong to make the Pentagon stumble forward, then held out a hand to help Bill get up again.

Bill clung to his and Ephie’s hand and was pulled up in a blink of an eye.

"I know! It’s awesome!" he exclaimed too.

"Let’s party all night!" yelled Myr.

"Bring the music!"

"Call everyone else!"

"And the drink!"

"We’ll go on until tomorrow!" declared Bill and the base roared its approval. He looked into the crowd and saw Ford farther away, talking to Featherlight.

Cotter put his arm around Bill’s shape, a glass already in his hand, and diverted Bill’s attention again.

Bill accepted the drink, raised the glass in a toast and drowned his desire in the alcohol.

* * *

 

At half past two, with the party still in progress, Stanford stood up, greeted the rebels of his table and those nearby and went out, heading for his room.

Bill managed to wait only five minutes, before saying goodbye to everyone by excusing a tiredness that he did not feel, then went out and followed him.

His steps, slow as he crossed the hall, became faster and faster, until he ran down the corridors. When he reached Ford's room, Bill threw the door open and ran inside, as if he was chased by an army.

Ford sat on the bed, his shirt pulled over his head: his lifted arms were still inside the sleeves. He turned to look at Bill with wide open eyes, surprised by that impetuous entry.

Bill slammed the door behind him and stepped toward Ford. He threw his hat on the ground, took off his bow tie and was on top of him even before Ford could say a single word. His half-closed lips were occupied directly by Bill's, by his tongue that slid into Ford’s mouth. Bill kissed him furiously, squeezing his cheeks, running his hands through the soft hair, to pull him closer.

He felt Ford smile in the kiss, his lips still lifted when Bill left his mouth and moved to cover his neck with kisses.

"At least... let me... undress..." he said, between hot breaths.

Bill ignored him, continued to cover his neck with kisses and licks. He heard Ford pull off his shirt, the soft rustle when it fall to the ground and twelve fingers leaned on him, to make new flowers of delight bloom with their touch.

Bill gripped Ford's back with one hand and dug the other in his hair, gasping as he rubbed against his chest. Shape against skin, heat against heat, his smooth perfection in contact with that surface so bizarre and irregular. He felt like he was burning.

He wanted more.

Ford finally used his delicious mouth and covered Bill’s nearest side with kisses, while passing his thumb along the other. Bill moaned, crossed by bursts of pleasure.

"I’ve wanted to do that for hours," he confessed, passing his fingers up and down along the hairline. Ford caressed his back, rubbing his lips against him.

"Me too."

Bill put a hand on Ford’s chin, lowered his head and moved toward the human’s lips, sinking his tongue in Ford’s mouth again. Still kissing him, Ford pulled Bill up, supporting him by the back, until he managed to rest the knees on his shoulders. Bill ran both hands up and down Ford’s head, enjoying the soft rustling of hair between his fingers, intoxicated by the fire that those lips poured into him.

They parted panting, gasping for air, but without stopping to search for each other.

"Never do that again," Bill moaned, pulling Ford’s face toward him. "Don’t ever go on a mission without me."

Ford let Bill led his face to him and covered his shape with kisses, his eyes closed, his thumbs caressing both sides. Bill sighed with pleasure when Ford switched to the tongue. He felt himself flooded by fire.

"Go on, go on. Oh, you're wonderful. More, Ford. More…”

Ford blew on his wet form, a fresh breath that made the heat even more burning and made Bill moan again. He rested his lips in the center of Bill’s shape and sucked hard, with satisfied murmurs that made his shape vibrate. Bill tightened his hair and sighed, blissful.

"I want you," Ford's deep voice reverberated against him, "I want you so much."

Bill laughed, drunk with passion and fire.

"All that time," he moaned, "Without touching you ... yes, there, more..." he rubbed his legs against him. "Kiss me again."

Ford's mouth moved upward, brushed his half-closed eyelids. Bill changed them into lips and closed them around Ford’s again. Ford adapted to his rhythm and Bill’s firm grip, by giving him even more fire, even more passion.

How could that human be _so_ perfect?

From his lips, Ford kissed again his shape, sides, arms, as if every part of him was precious and not enough, searching for him with the same furious desire with which Bill kissed every part of him that could reach, pulling his head against him, rubbing his legs around Ford’s neck, looking for more contact, more body, more of him to hold.

"I wish I had endless hands..." he sighed, between moans.

"I wish that too," muttered Ford, drunk with passion as much as he was. He passed his tongue over Bill’s shape, over and over again in the same spot, lighting flaming flowers on top of each other, in a bonfire that let a shrill moan of delight escape from his lips.

Bill pulled him again to his mouth, Ford's tongue wandered over his shape, they embraced, Bill rubbed against his body again and Ford passed his mouth along Bill’s sides.

Wonderful news, the end of the war closer than ever and Stanford to light him up with his passion: that day could not have ended better.

* * *

 

"So that’s the situation: to the north, Hatteras led an expedition against Base 11 and managed to blow it up. To the south, James's group caught two ferret-beings who revealed the position of their camp and then succeeded in killing them all." Myr turned the sheet. "While in our last attack there was the defeat of fifteen Polygons and three lynx-mercenaries, as well as the news about the expedition to the south led by Turlan Wehls." he raised his arms, with an expression of ostentatious modesty. "I know, I know, we’re fantastic. Hold your compliments."

"It's a fundamental piece of information, which can make us win the war." Ander leaned over the table. "That is why, we must take every detail with a grain of salt: Delix may have lied about the date or the route."

"You had to see him: at that moment he would’ve done anything to survive," Cotter intervened, the tone still full of joy from the night before. "Laria was very capable, she broke only one corner at a time: he was still alive, but at one point he was suffering so much, that he could’ve sold us his own _son_ , if it would’ve stopped her."

"The Women in my group are always the best," boasted Ephie.

"That doesn’t exclude that the information could have some mixed-up details," insisted Ander. "Or that Circles, meanwhile, could change their mind: Turlan Wehls going to the south, with only ten Polygons and two lynx-mercenaries as backup? They’re too few..."

"It makes sense, instead!" Ephie jumped on, "Because it’s supposed to be a secret journey! According to them, we don’t know where the path is, nor that he’ll be there: if Wehls was surrounded by a full escort, it would caught our attention."

"What if Wehls won’t be there at all? What if Delix lied, just because he knew that, with such an information, Laria would stop torturing him?”

"It may be," agreed Leder, "But in any case, we must not give any sign of knowing anything and continue with normal attacks."

"We have to catch other generals." Myr put the sheets on the table. "And get the same information from them: if everyone says the same story, with the exact same details, then we can confirm it."

"But if it were a lie that all Polygons made up?"

"We’ll never know," replied Cotter, "Until the day of the alleged expedition."

"Until then, we still have to kill as many enemies as possible." Ephie tapped the sheets in front of her. "We have enough weapons to overwhelm at least twenty Polygons, and our rebels keep training with ionic guns. We can attack small groups..."

"We can do a lot more," said Bill.

All the others fell silent, their eyes focused on him. Bill stood on his chair, answering all those gazes. His shape still burned of Stanford’s kisses from the night before, as if those lips had filled him with a divine power. He felt invincible and immortal, he could have done anything with just a snap of his fingers. He was a hundred steps ahead of the Circles, he was omniscient and omnipotent.

He was the Queen.

"We can even attack an entire army," he continued, his voice growing. "We've already done that. We’ve already killed one hundred of them in one shot! Have you forgotten? Even if this information turns out to be false, even if Wehls never came out again, it doesn’t matter. Because we can go get him. We can destroy all his allies, until there isn’t _even a single Polygon_ left to fight in his place!"

"But the weapons ..." Ephie tried.

"You said it yourself." Bill raised a hand towards her. "We have enough weapons to take down twenty Polygons. But our rebels can do much more, _we_ can do much more! We’ve _already_ killed twenty Polygons! And just by using blades! Do you really think that, with _guns_ , we can _only_ kill twenty enemies?"

He looked at everyone.

"We must stop thinking about ourselves as a small group." he raised his hands. "We’re many. We’re powerful. We’re much smarter than them."

"Well, our people have more experience than before," said Myr.

"And we also have precious informations." Cotter rubbed under his eye, contemplative.

"I think we can venture to attack a larger group." Leder leaned across the table and moved along the map with her fingertips. "It’ll be a longer fight, but we have good chances."

"Having good chances doesn’t mean certain victory," replied Ander. "It's true, we're better prepared and lately we're winning more often. But we must not underestimate our enemies: the Circles are tyrants, not idiots. They’ve carried on this war for years, they’ve always found new allies to hinder and slow us down. Now we have, perhaps, something that gives us some advantage, but it doesn’t automatically mean that we’ve become the strongest and we can throw ourselves headlong into every battle. On the contrary, now we must reflect more than ever on our every move."

"Ander’s got a point," Leder talked again. "It’s true that we’re strong and prepared, but it’s also true that we can’t get carried away. We will attack soon." her eye bent into a smile. "Dare a bit more, but calculate all the possibilities. What do you think?"

Cotter held up both hands.

"I think it's a good idea."

"I agree, too," said Ephie. "But I want to join the next attack."

Myr and Kryptos simply closed and reopened the eye, as a sign of assent. Ander lowered his arms.

"All right."

Bill sat down again.

"So be it," he accepted. "We’ll catch up later. For now, we can close the meeting."

Chairs moved, papers were folded. Ephie slid down from her chair and approached Bill, with a bundle of sheets under her arm.

"You're right," she said. "We still think of ourselves as a small group and continue to underestimate us." a playful wink. "Use all this liveliness you have, to make one of these talk to our fighters: they would appreciate it for sure."

"I will." Bill crossed his legs and answered with a wink. "They must be more determined than ever, if they want to win."

Ephie laughed.

"You're a lot bold, recently," she said. "At the next attack, I want you to come with me."

"I'm definitely coming."

She smiled and went out, reaching Leder on the doorway.

Bill allowed himself a sigh and rubbed his fingertips between them, looking at the map lying in front of him. The path that Wehls would have taken was drawn in red and marked by pins.

They would have defeated him. Because Bill knew what his moves were.

He got out of the chair and stretched himself, once he touched the ground. His shape tingled, in part to the time he had been sitting, in part to the desire that was awakening inside him. He missed Ford, with his brown eyes and soft lips, his wonderful fingers and his melancholic voice. He wanted to talk about the attack with him. And of science, _especially_ of science.

"Bill, can we talk for a moment?"

Bill turned around: Ander was still in the council room and was watching him. His eye was serious and worried, as always. And again, just to be original, the Triangle looked like he was ready to lecture him.

... all right, he would listen his lecture. But just because he was feeling nice. He sighed, leaned against a chair and folded his arms.

" _Please_ tell me, Ander," Bill invited him.

The old Triangle frowned.

"I'm serious, Bill," he said. "I know that, for you, mine are just needless worries, but someone needs to think about that, since you don’t do it."

"And I thank you for that." Bill rolled his eye. "Luckily you’re here to worry in my place, in place of all the others and of the whole base."

Ander raised his eyebrow and gave him another glare of reproach. At least, even if he was boring and serious, Ander could still notice the irony.

"A series of victories doesn’t mean the war’s ending," he said. "Nor that it will end soon. And we haven’t suddenly become powerful: we’re always the same rebels as before, who fight with weapons stolen from their enemies. If they finish their weapons, they can order more powerful ones. If _we_ finish them, we must content ourselves with stealing their hand-me-downs. If they lose a hundred soldiers, they have another two hundred. If _we_ lose a hundred soldiers, it's a real problem."

Bill snorted, exasperated.

"You're overreacting again."

"I'm not overreacting, I want to make you _understand_ ," said the old Shape, emphasizing the last word. "We can’t afford to let our guard down and attack at random. We must _think_."

"Think, think, think." Bill rolled his eye again. "Leave the thinking for the research, Ander."

"It was the thinking to bring us here where we are, today."

" _I_ was the one to bring us here!" Bill replied. "If we had listened to _you_ , now we would still be locked up in your house, studying in secret and being slaves of the Circles!"

"You gave the push, fine. But you can’t deny that, if we are at this point, it’s also because of the thinking." Ander brought a hand to the side of his eye. "If we won battles, if you killed Deschel, if we know about Wehls' expedition, it’s because we sat down and studied every move," he spelt every words out. "We’ve been _thinking_ and not running into a fight, euphoric and reckless."

"I’m not saying that we have to run into every attack at random," said Bill, bringing a hand to the side. "I say we can do more. That we can go further. That we can _dare_."

"But we _can’t_ do it," replied Ander, "Especially not now that we have some fundamental information." he gave him another stern look. "And you should know that without me spelling it out, since you’re the leader of the rebellion and the most intelligent between us."

"Maybe it’s exactly because I'm the smartest that I'm the boss?" answered Bill, cheerfully. "We need someone who liven up those rebels and lead them into battle." he smiled. "And every boss needs a counselor who worries about everything."

Ander closed his eye and took a long breath. He raised a hand to rub his top.

"You can’t lead them into battle, Bill."

"Sure I can." Bill raised a hand. "I’m the Queen. I’m the one who can go anywhere and be everywhere."

Ander opened his eye and looked at him.

"Bill, you're the _King_ of this war."

Bill laughed.

"The King!" he chuckled. "That’s ridiculous! The King barely moves and must only be protected!"

"The King is the one who determines victory or defeat." Ander approached him, looking him straight in the eye. "If the King is taken, the game is lost."

Bill rolled his eye.

"Even if they’d kill me, the war wouldn’t end," he argued. "If the Queen dies, the King survives."

"Who’s the King, then?"

"Freedom," he replied, raising his arms. "The ideal at the base of the rebellion. That's what the Circles can’t take from us: if they take away our ideal, the war is over."

"It's not like that," he said. "You might see it like that, but the others don’t think the same way. _You_ are the emblem of the revolution. If you’re killed, the rebellion dies with you."

Bill brought a hand to his side.

"Sheees, Ander, calm down," he laughed. "My life’s not in danger!"

Ander looked at him from tip to toe. His eye darkened.

"No," he told him, his tone became suddenly much more serious. "But you’re impetuous. And irresponsible. Instead of staying focused, you give yourself to distractions."

_You give yourself to distractions._

Bill slid his hand down from his side. Ander's stern look and those words made him suddenly feel naked, too exposed, uncomfortable. The old Triangle had the same expression from months before, when he saw him sitting on the table with Stanford, laughing and talking about science. Indeed, it was even worse than that day: it was an eye that looked inside him, reading deep into his mind, digging in his secrets.

It was an eye that _knew_.

The sudden awareness made him furiously blush. The thought that Ander had seen him, even just by mistake, while he was giving himself to Ford, was enough to fill him with shame. That eye might have seen him while Ford held him in his hands, while Bill let himself be covered with kisses, while his naked shape was covered by his lover's tongue.

The anger took over the shame, an anger so strong to make his hands shake and clench in fists. How dare he spy on them? How dare he witness one of his moments of pure ecstasy? And who Ander thought he was to scold him? Ander knew _nothing_!

Bill walked towards him, staring straight into his eye, back at him.

"My distractions are my business only," he replied, icy. "Mind your own, instead of meddle with what I do, _Alexander._ "

Ander took a step back, his eye wide open. Bill gave him a scornful gaze and walked past him, eye forward, heading for the door.

"You can’t be too familiar with the human."

Bill stopped and turned quickly, blushing more than ever.

"What I do it’s not your business!" he shouted at him.

"It is, if you put the whole war in danger for him," Ander replied, without raising his voice. "I condoned until now, because I thought you’d come to your senses, understood what’s important in this battle. You’re in charge and you can’t give your trust to someone you don’t know anything about."

"I know everything about him!"

"Oh yeah? So he told you what Dimension is he from?" Ander insisted. "What’s the name of his planet? Where is it? What is he doing in the Multiverse? You can’t believe the story of the six fingers: in a world where they give him that much freedom, one more finger isn’t a good reason to run away."

He grabbed Bill's arm and looked at him deeply.

"I’m saying that for your own good, Bill," he continued, his voice softer. "Don’t trust someone you hardly know. That human hides something. I don’t know what, but he gave me this vibe from the beginning."

Bill was shaking, angry. He tore his arm away from Ander's grip and walked toward him, until he towered over the old Triangle.

"You know _nothing,"_ he said. "I don’t care about your vibes. I do what I want and you have no right to tell me what I should or shouldn’t do."

"Bill..."

"Shut up. I don’t want to hear you say anything about my personal life anymore." he looked at him with narrowed eye. "And don’t you dare to talk to someone about any of this: if you do, _I will know._ "

Ander fell silent, though his eye was still overflowing with concern. Bill ignored him, turned and left the room, leaving him alone.


	13. Armageddon game

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter will contain graphic violence and blood in the first part, while at the end there will be some Billford. War and romance, to suit all tastes.  
> Everything is perfect, everything is moving in the right way.

> _"Armageddon game is a chess game that is guaranteed to produce a decisive result, because, if there is a draw, it is ruled a victory for Black.”_

* * *

 

The next attack was planned against a group of thirty Polygons and ten ferret-beings: forty enemies, against twenty-five rebels. A risky move, thought Ford, too risky to come from the First Ones. Bill or Ephie could have proposed such a plan, but there were Shapes like Ander, Leder or Cotter, much more cautious and thoughtful, who would hardly be persuaded to approve a similar idea.

Instead it turned out that the plan had been suggested by Leder herself, and then it was refined by the whole group. After two hours of discussion, the other generals were allowed to enter and even Ford was able to set foot in the council room: the plan was explained, other additions were made, other discussions carried out. Bill and Ephie would take part, Featherlight proposed himself, and also Willar and Velas from the Semiliquids asked to join.

Ford volunteered too.

The battle, calculated with precision down to the unexpected, proved to be a success. At the end of the battle, in the field invaded by corpses and broken Shapes, the only one left alive was the enemies’ captain: a Dodecagon named Forren, gray shape stained with blood and eye shimmering with rage.

Ford sat next to Willar and watched how the Shapes managed the interrogation of the enemy: Ephie herself tied the Dodecagon and was standing behind him, her hands on his shape to force him down to his knees. Besides her, a circle of Women and Isosceles pointed their weapons at the enemy.

Bill stood in front of the captain and turned Forren's gun in his hands. His yellow shape, although stained with blue blood, shone in the circle of colors that surrounded the gray enemy.

"So, Forren," he was saying to him, with a cheerful tone, "I’m feeling nice today: maybe because the sky is full of all these colors that shouldn’t exist, according to the word of our _oh-so-wise_ Circles, maybe because I just killed thirty Polygons, but I want to spare your life." he tapped his own hand with the barrel of the gun. "Just give me a good, useful information. Just one information and I'll let you go."

The Dodecagon looked at him with fiery eye.

"If you really believe I will betray the Circles out of fear, then you're dead wrong." he leaned towards him, toward the barrel of the gun. "Kill me, Cipher. I won’t tell you anything."

Bill looked up at Ephie and closed his eye only once, a silent consent. She grabbed one of the angles of the Dodecagon, pressed one foot against his shape and pulled.

The angle broke and Forren let out a chilling cry, while blue blood dripped from the crack that had opened at the top and ended in the shocked, wide-opened eye.

"Oh, did I say I’d kill you?" Bill asked, with exaggerated surprise, "I don’t recall saying I’d kill you. The idea was to torture you." he smiled. "And, considering how many angles you have, I think it’ll be a _long_ torture."

The Dodecagon trembled.

"You can’t be serious."

"What do you think?" he met Ephie's gaze again and gave her another gesture: she pulled the other angle, until the enemy commander let out another scream. Forren squinted his eye, panting, his whole shape was shaking with pain. Ephie pulled harder, until the second angle broke.

Forren's scream was more piercing than before.

"So" Bill asked, still with that cheerful tone, "Do you feel like collaborating now?"

“Die,” he wheezed, “Die, disgusting, equilateral scum!"

Another nod to Ephie and she grabbed the third angle. She pushed hard against the back of the Dodecagon and, with a satisfied cheer, managed to tear it: the angle remained in her hand, connected to the enemy’s shape by filaments of muscles and blue blood. Ephie pulled harder, trying to break those connections, and Forren gave a scream of pure pain.

"If we keep going like this, you'll find yourself having only three sides too," Bill teased him. "For now, you have nine: just think, it took five minutes and your stupid stubborness, to wipe away the efforts of three generations. Your great-great-grandfather Nonagon must be very disappointed with you."

Forren just cried out of pain, trying to catch his breath with long hissing gasps.

"Still nothing, uh? Let's move on to eight, then! The climb of your family in the aristocracy has been completely useless, don’t you think? It only brought you here, on your knees before the last of the society, Triangles and Lines." Bill lowered towards him. "How does it feel, to know that it’s the scum that has your life in its hands?"

Ephie broke the fourth angle, reducing him to eight. Forren’s shape was no longer gray, crossed by streams of blue blood and tears of agony that flowed down. The Dodecagon murmured curses between his teeth, unable to stand on his knees, stunned with pain.

"Hey, don’t try to take a nap, it isn’t bedtime yet!" Bill’s voice was again a cheerful ring, while he tapped the tormented enemy with the gun. "Wakey-wakey, rise and shine! Good morning! It’s not polite to sleep in the presence of guests and an aristocrat should know!"

Forren murmured something, too low to hear. Bill leaned towards him.

"I didn’t quite get that," he said, "Repeat."

"Le... leave me..." he repeated in a hoarse voice, just a bit higher than a murmur, "Leave me..."

"Do you want to give me some information?"

"The... south route... used for weapons..." he said, in dribs and drabs, "It's behind the hill... two... twenty kilometers from here..."

Silence fell again. Bill blinked.

"That's all?"

"It's a new path..." the Dodecagon's eye trembled. "Do... don’t tell me you knew it."

"It's not a _very_ useful information," Bill clarified. He straightened up. "Good, but I bet you can do better. Maybe, with another incentive, you’ll start remembering something else."

As soon as Ephie put her hands on the fifth angle, Forren let out and excruciating scream and tried to wriggle free.

"I don’t know anything!" he cried, panicked. "I don’t know anything else! I swear!"

"Oh, I'm quite sure you know something more." Bill poked at the center of his shape. "You're a captain, the Circles must have told you something more important. Think about it, Forren, search carefully in your mind and make me happy."

"I don’t know anything!" he repeated with a shrill scream, which grew in tone and led to a throbbing cry, when Ephie broke the fifth angle. Forren burst into tears, swaying to keep his balance, the blood that had covered his gray in blue.

"Stop... " he pleaded, "Stop..."

"I'm still waiting for some useful neeews!" Bill chanted, "I still don’t hear anythiiing!"

Forren sobbed, his eye shut closed, while hot tears ran down through the rivulets of blood. Bill sighed and looked at the Line.

"Ephie ... " he invited her.

"There's an expedition!" screamed Forren, opening his eye wide. "An expedition! In a month! South! Turlan Wehls!"

Bill looked down at the Dodecagon again.

"Go on."

"Turlan Wehls will take part in an expedition to the south," Forren said, "He’ll lead it. I swear it's true! I'm not lying!" he whined. "Please, for pity’s sake, let me go."

"What expedition?"

"I don’t know." Forren’s whole shape trembled. "I swear, I really don’t know! He’ll go south, with a small escort and weapons, I don’t know anything else! They didn’t tell me anything else! I really don’t know anything else! I swear, for pity’s..."

"What escort?"

"I don’t know!" he sobbed in a higher voice. "Polygons, ferret-beings, I really don’t know! Please believe me, I'm not lying to you! That's all I know, it's really all I know, please, please..."

Bill raised his eye to meet Ephie's: she only blinked once. The Chief Circle expedition had been confirmed.

"It's okay." Bill pointed the gun at him. "You were really helpful, Forren."

The former Dodecagon raised his eye: it was wide open in surprise, with blood still dripping from his eyelashes, mixed with tears. The pupil darted from side to side, looking for an escape route or a sign that he was joking.

Bill charged the ion.

"B... but you said... that you would’ve spared me," he said, with the confused tone of a child. "If I had given you a good information... you would’ve spared me..."

"I told you that." Bill winked at him. "But we didn’t shake on it."

That said, he fired at the center of his shape.

* * *

 

"Forren confirmed Wehls’ expedition to the south. It’ll be in a month and Wehls will be the leader, followed by a small escort."

The council listened in grave silence his report about the last battle. Standing on the chair, with the eyes of the other intellectuals and all the leaders of the rebellion focused on him, Bill felt more than ever the Queen of the game.

"Two confessions don’t make a proof," Ander was the first to comment, breaking the silence. "Forren could’ve been instructed on what to say. We must insist with the attacks and extort more information from the enemies’ leaders, pretending not to know anything."

Bill gave a little laugh.

"He must’ve been trained really well to lie, during our work of conviction," he said ironically, as he held out his hand to Ephie in a gallant gesture. "But all right, I’ve nothing against it! At least each of us can have fun, by breaking some angles of those lousy Polygons."

The rest of the council smiled with him, a couple Shape giggled.

"The meeting’s over," Bill announced, raising his hands. "Go and have fun! But don’t party too much, we need to play with our enemies too or else they’ll feel cast out," he added, with a wink that made them laugh.

"You cheeky Shape," Ephie teased him, while she stood up to stretch her legs. "You're really having fun, aren’t you?"

"Me?" Bill brought a hand on his side and rolled his eye. "You’re the one to talk! I saw how you were looking at his sides, craving to break them all!"

"Oh, well..." Ephie closed her eyelids and lifted them, slowly. "I’m a Line. And Lines are prey to passions and instincts."

"Sure, I remember: they’re also inconsiderate and ignorant."

"Of course." she winked. "That’s coming from the most intelligent Shape here, after you."

Bill laughed.

"I'm going to clean up." he ran a hand over the dried blood on his yellow shape. "I can’t stay like that."

"Of course, my lady," joked Ephie, extending her hand in a showy gallant gesture. "May I help you come down from such a high height?"

"Ah ah." Bill jumped off the chair. “See you later.”

The room emptied slowly, the leaders kept talking to each other. Myr was already outside, along with a group of bird-beings. Kryptos and Willar went out shortly after, along with Featherlight. Ford followed them, hands in his pockets.

Bill walked behind them and turned back to say a last goodbye to the remaining leaders: Ephie replied with a swift gesture of her hand, and then diverted her attention to Woll of the Semiliquids, who was asking her something.

Bill’s attention fell upon Ander, who had just dismissed a Square. The old Shape's gaze met his, the eye moved to Stanford, who was leaving, and returned to Bill. His eyebrow furrowed.

Bill held his gaze, challenging him. _Yes, you got that right: I’ll spend the evening with Stanford. Come on, tell me something, if you dare. Try even just to open your mouth._

Ander gave him just a cautionary look, and then turned his attention elsewhere. Satisfied, Bill turned and went out to reach Ford.

* * *

 

"I didn’t expect you to hold me back," Ford said, his lips against Bill’s shape. "You’re always the first to say that any place is fine, as long as I kiss you."

Bill moaned delighted, stroking Ford's hair, while the human's mouth covered him with soft burning flowers, his favorites.

They were safe again in Stanford's room, after a short visit to the creation room. He had allowed Ford to color him again, filling his sight with the human’s focused face and shuddering with every brush stroke. When those lips leaned over his and pulled him into a kiss, Bill had been so close to surrender himself entirely to passion: but the mere thought of being watched by Ander reappeared, waking him up from the wonderful trance of Ford’s kisses, to ask his lover to seek refuge in a safer place.

"True," Bill replied, amid sighs, "But I wanted a little more privacy."

Ford continued to kiss him with meticulous care. Bill had not told him about his discussion with Ander, nor that the old Triangle knew about them. Although Ford was very resourceful during battles and bold in intimacy, in general he was a shy guy: if he knew that someone else found out about their affair, he would’ve worried too much and stopped leaving those fleeting kisses that made him quiver.

Bill stroked his cheek. He did not want this to stop. He did not want Ford to start looking around and wondering if each place was safe enough, or moving far from him while in public, because otherwise they would have been too close and others might have suspected. He wanted Ford to still watch him and give him kisses in secret, caught between euphoria for the violated rules and thrill at the thought of being caught.

Ford's lips stroked his side and Bill leaned back against his hands, letting Ford handle the situation to give him more pleasure. And, _damn_ , Ford knew very well how to make him on fire.

From simple stroking, Ford began to give him small kisses along the side, without forgetting to give a kiss to Bill’s hand, before putting it on his cheek. Bill happily agreed to touch that skin so warm, reached the ear and went down to the jawline, then gently pulled Ford towards him, silently asking for more.

Ford arrived to the top and went down again to the base, leaving kisses like little roses. Reached the base, he closed his lips around the corner and gave a small suck.

And that took Bill’s breath away.

It was like a short circuit, the whole world disappeared in the lightning of pleasure that ran through him, while feeling that damp softness against his sensitive end. He gave a deep groan of pleasure and grabbed Ford's jaw harder, pushing him into doing that again.

Ford sucked one more time and pleasure exploded, powerful as an ionic reaction, like the clash of stars, red like the swathes of the sky. Ford’s mouth went up to the top, while holding Bill’s side between his lips, giving him such pleasure that, for a moment, Bill feared he would die from too much bliss.

Billions of years and _no one_ , in his boring world, had never suspected that the shape could experience so many different sensations, with just the touch of lips!

When he reached the top, Ford came down just with his tongue, leaving a trail of fire that made him tremble. Bill pressed his fingers against the human’s skin, sinking his fingertips into the flesh of his cheek, asking for more. Ford's eyes were closed as he savored Bill on his lips and against his tongue.

Oh, that human was really _too much_ perfect.

Ford moved to the other side and covered that one too with his skillful lips, hearing from Bill another delighted moan. His hands were struggling to grab as much of Ford as possible, his soft face that slipped through his fingers, hair, nose, ears, to have more of him on his shape.

"I want you," Ford said: his voice was low, a warm shudder against his wet shape. Bill changed his eye into lips, tightened Ford's chin tightly and drew him into a kiss.

Ford let himself be led and crushed Bill with his passion, filling him with the fire that burned inside his body, nailing him under the determined weight of his kisses, of his strong hands, of those burning eyes. As much as he loved to be the revered Queen of the Rebellion, Bill had discovered that he also loved that delicious feeling of weakness, to surrender between hands much bigger than him, allowing himself to be overwhelmed and lead along the path of ecstasy, like that first time in the infirmary.

And being overwhelmed in that way was _amazing_.

Ford broke off the kiss to return to his side and, once again, ran his tongue along it. Slave of his feelings and conquered by that mouth, Bill gave him a sharp, passionate moan.


	14. Announced mate

> _“The announced mate is a practice, whereby a player would announce a sequence of moves, that led to a forced checkmate for the announcing player in a specified number of moves (for example, "mate in five").”_

* * *

 

Bill did not like small meetings.

There was too little public, to begin with. And that little bit of audience did not look at him with admiring and hopeful eyes: on the contrary, they mostly gave him exasperated and parental looks. But again, Cotter, Leder and Ander _always_ had that expression.

Then they had to discuss and discuss about the same topic _again_ : to trust or not to trust the information about Turlan Wehls? It was quite obvious that it was correct, but since _some_ of them were tough as nails (and Ander was the one telling him _he_ was stubborn!), the others had to work twice as hard to convince them.

"These are the facts," concluded Cotter, throwing the sheets on the table, "We won four battles and all four Polygons leaders we tortured, repeated the same thing: in twenty days there’ll be an expedition to the south, led by Wehls." he raised his arms. "Maybe it's all part of a giant trap made by the Circles to defeat us but, at this point, I think it's worth trying."

"Maybe," Ander agreed, in partial support, "But we still don’t have any news from James or Hatteras. Our messengers should’ve arrived two weeks ago and they haven’t yet sent anyone back." he sighed. "I just hope they didn’t get into trouble."

"Impossible," Bill joked, "The less responsible leaders of the rebellion are all gathered here!"

Ephie and Myr giggled with him, Kryptos hid a smile behind his hand. Leder, Cotter and Ander instead gave him their best parenting expressions, by rolling their eye.

"They’ll come," Myr reassured the old Triangle. He piled up his documents and jumped off the chair. "They probably stopped just a little longer, to avoid the enemies’ scouting patrol."

The others began to gather their papers and stretch out. Bill raised his arms above his top: at least they had Cotter's support for the Wehls question, so it meant that the only one with the strongest doubts remained Ander. And one against six would have been convinced soon.

Chairs began to move and Bill got out of his too. The satisfaction for the finished meeting made his shape all tingly: finally he was standing again and soon he would come out of that room, to do something else. In his case, to come back to Stanford.

His shape tingled again, in more than one way. Stanford, _Ford_ , his human, his lover with flames in his eyes and lips that left roses. They had parted only a few hours ago, after a night of passion, and he already missed him.

All because of that stupid, long meeting.

"Maybe today or tomorrow," was telling Leder. Ander rubbed under his eye.

"They must’ve let us know something alread..."

A knock interrupted his talk. The door opened and Lidya entered.

"Am I disturbing?"

"We've finished," said Bill.

The Line entered and stopped in front of them. The black arms showed purple bands, a symbol of her belonging to Myr’s group.

"A messenger from James has just arrived."

"How fortunate, we were just waiting for him!" exclaimed Bill, "Let him in."

Lydia withdrew and, in her place, entered an Octagon: he wore a gray jacket and his perimeter was crossed by a long emerald line, the same shade as James. His eye was marked by fatigue and he held an empty gun in his hand.

The Octagon bent over one knee, his eye on the ground.

"Don’t..." Bill began. Myr took the messenger’s arm and invited him to get up again, Kryptos got him a chair. The Octagon sat on the edge.

"I’m late," he apologized immediately. "Because of an enemies’ patrol: they were searching the area near the swamp."

Bill refrained himself from rolling his eye. Here it was confirmed: Myr had said it five minutes ago and the simplest explanation turned out to be the correct one. Ander's concern was useless.

"News from James?"

The messenger leaned forward.

"We attacked a patrol led by Ittel," he revealed.

"Ittel?" repeated Myr. "He’s a lot near the Circles. How many sides does he have, twenty?"

"Yes." the Octagon's eye shone with amusement. "Our best Line has come to break ten, before he spoke."

"What did he say?"

"He confirmed," announced. "In about two weeks, the Chief Circle will lead an expedition to the south."

Relief, smiles and sighs ran through the group, their eyes sparkled. Leder thanked the messenger with a blink of an eye, Cotter squeezed his hand, Myr tapped his forearm.

Bill was overflowing with energy: another evidence of Wehls’ expedition. He could not wait to tell Stanford about the news! Now all that was left was Hatteras's messenger and they were re...

The Octagon changed position on the chair, the joy in his eye replaced by concern.

"Another thing, sir," he added, turning to Bill.

"Go ahead." Bill gave him a friendly pat. "And no need to call me "sir". It’s just Bill."

"Bill," the Octagon corrected himself. "The patrol of enemies I crossed... didn’t just happen to be there."

"What were they doing?" asked Cotter, suddenly serious.

"They were waiting." the Octagon's eye looked at each of those present. "They were camping in the middle of nowhere, but still seemed to be waiting for something. And indeed, after a couple of minutes, a portal opened."

Everyone tensed forward.

"A portal?"

"Did you see it open?"

"What it looked like?"

"What color it was?"

"How was it?"

"It was... blue," he replied, intimidated by the sudden flood of questions, "Blue and white. Oval, taller than a bird-being. And it emitted light. Other mercenaries came out..."

"More mercenaries?" Cotter rubbed his eye. "Of course. It was obvious that they’d call in reinforcements."

"How many?" asked Ander.

"About twenty."

Bill rolled his eye. Perfect, here's how to make the day worse. Twenty new mercenaries. Damn.

"And…?"

"I tried to keep close to hear what they said." the messenger put a hand in his jacket and took out a piece of parchment, light brown and worn-out. "They were talking about something ... they came from very far away," his voice became more worried. "They weren’t like the other lynx-mercenaries. Even how they spoke, they were different. They camped there, talking all day and all night, then left in the morning. So I raided the camp to see if there was anything left." he handed the paper to Bill. "And I found this."

Bill took the parchment from his hands and, with everyone’s eyes leaning to see, unfolded it.

And the world stopped spinning.

* * *

 

"I like to build forward, when the war will be over." was explaining Willar, seraphic as ever. Concentric circles widened from the center of his lilac surface, to reach the edges. His eyes did not look at Ford, but far away. Perhaps, at that future that would come soon.

Ford put his chin on the hand, interested. The common room was empty, except for him, Willar and Featherlight, who was busy polishing all his blades.

"I prefer to think of the present," Featherlight replied, conjuring yet another blade from between his feathers. They seemed to never end and he, like a juggler, always pulled out a new one, which then disappeared as it appeared, hiden in the plumage that covered him.

"The war is not over yet," the bird-being continued, "And it won’t end soon anyway. Even after killing Turlan Wehls, there’ll still be leaders and generals who’ll continue to fight." he turned a new blade over in his feathers. "Quite the opposite: it’ll be a real bloodbath, much worse than all the battles we’ve seen so far."

"I am aware of it," Willar agreed, "But, for the first time, there’s an end to it. Even if the road is still long, we can now see the end." he turned to Ford "Call me a dreamer, but I like to give myself this small pleasure to imagine a life finally in peace."

Ford smiled at him.

"That's a beautiful thought."

The end of the war. Even Bill had thought of it every now and then: looking at the ceiling, lying on Ford's bed and stroking his hand. He spoke of new cities, larger and more colorful. Of general meetings, in which knowledge was passed to everyone, from the last of the Isosceles, to the most-sided Polygon. He wanted to build in a new way, using color to decorate and even create new colors, why not? Then he noticed Ford’s gaze, laughed in that soft way and put both hands on his face, to pull him into a kiss.

"And you, Ford?" asked Willar, "What are you thinking about? Present or future?"

His heart tightened. His mind was supposed to focus only on the future and the revenge. Yet there was the present: that little paradoxical oasis, fragile like a glass sheet. Here there was a straw bed where he could sleep, soft lips where surrender himself, black arms clutching him and a triangular shape where he can pour his denied love with thousand kisses. But on the other side, beyond the present, there was the Dimension that he would never see again, that had been his home, in which his family was living and that he could not leave to its fate.

And, the mere thought of having to choose between those two worlds was like a dagger in his heart.

"Future," he finally replied, with a choked voice. "But this present is special for me."

Willar smiled at him. His eyes were calm lakes, his smile a peaceful field.

"It’s the same for me too," he replied, "Because I got to know many different creatures and learn even more."

"Right," was Featherlight’s comment. Although he was still busy polishing blades, he smiled as well. "The good thing about this war is that at least we’ve mutual company." he turned a knife between his fingers, and then plant it on the table. "And together we’ll end this war."

"A lot of work is waiting for us," Willar agreed.

"Stanford."

The three turned: on the threshold of the main arch there was Ephie, a mint-green silhouette shining in the light.

"Hello, Ephie," he greeted her. "How’s it going? Is the meeting over?"

"Bill wants to see you," she replied. Her eye was serious, the pupil was staring at him. Under that intense gaze, Ford felt himself blush. What the hell had Bill said, to even make her call him in the council room?

"Alright," he stood up and walked across the bench, trying to keep his expression as neutral as possible. He nodded to Willar and Featherlight: the Semiliquid replied, by bending his head with a smile, the bird-creature just raised a wing.

Ford joined Ephie, expecting her to escort him: the Line, instead, moved aside and pointed to the exit. Her eye was looking the other way.

He walked past her and went on, heading for the council room. He kept his head down, to hide the embarrassment he felt coming up his cheeks. Once Bill had called him, but in the infirmary, using as an excuse that his injured hand needed to be checked. When Ford entered, he found the infirmary empty except for Bill himself, who had taken care of him and his hand in a _delightful_ way.

Ford shook his head, trying to disperse that memory. The meeting had been long and every time Bill had a long meeting, the first thing he did was run to him and suffocate him with kisses. This time it must have been too much for him if, instead of rushing into Ford's room, he had asked to be reached. He picked up the pace.

The door of the council room was closed: Ford knocked and opened.

Bill was the only one inside. He was sitting in his place, in the middle of the black table covered with documents. He raised his eye and looked at him.

"Come in."

Ford closed the door and reached him. Bill had not stood up, nor gestured to approach him, nor offered him a chair. He sat, with a parchment in his hand. His eye was tired, his shape tense.

_Bad news?_

Ford came closer, until he stopped in front of Bill, on the other side of the table. And only then, Bill lowered the paper and Ford saw it.

On the parchment there were black letters, written in the universal language of the Multiverse. There was his own image, ten years younger.

And at the top there was a WANTED sign.

Bill turned the paper over and showed it to him.

 _How did you get it?_ , Ford wanted to ask. _Where did you find it?_ But they were useless questions. He might even lie to Bill, tell him that the Ford there was an alternative, younger version fof himself, who had nothing to do with him.

But Ford admired his intelligence and loved him too much to make fun of him.

He just remained silent. He looked up at Bill and saw him hurt, trembling, _furious_.

"Is it all a game for you?" his voice was as firm as steel. "Is that what you like to do? To go to all the Bill in the Multiverse and play with each one of them?"

Ford stepped forward, opened his mouth to answer. _No, not_ …

"Who is he?" he asked again, raising the poster. "The tenth Bill you deceived? Or the hundredth? You drove him so mad, he had to put a bounty on your head to find you."

Ford put his tongue between his teeth. Bill turned the poster to look at it again.

"That's why you were _so_ perfect. You always said the right thing, _did_ the right thing. You could make me feel so special." his whole shape quivered with rage. " _And I trusted you._ "

_I didn’t mean to deceive you._

Bill looked up at him again. Anger seemed to mix with something more, a deeper shame.

"I gave you things that I’ve never granted to anyone else," he said. "A closeness and my complete trust. And you lied to me. _All this time_ , you played with me."

"Bill..."

"Did you have fun, Stanford Pines?" he asked. "Was it fun to play me and take advantage of my ignorance? Make me believe I was important to you, when actually I was nothing?"

"Bill, don’t..."

"Shut up."

Ford fell silent. Millions of words crowded on his lips - _it's not like that, you've been the only one I've ever met aside from my original Bill, I didn’t want to lie, I couldn’t tell you the truth_ \- but none really mattered. He could also tell him everything, but he had still lied to him. And, judging by that hurt expression, nothing would ever be the same again.

 _I should be used to it, since it’s already happened to me_ , he thought, and that thought was more painful than a stab through the heart.

Bill's eye was trembling with rage. It was not the frightening anger of his Bill Cipher, but a more intimate, more human anger. An anger that made him want to approach, held that small shape in his arms and ask him for forgiveness with a million kisses.

But that eye told him he could not do it anymore.

Bill raised a hand to point at the door.

"Go away," he ordered, with an icy tone. "Get away from this Dimension. Don’t you dare to work together with the Circles or give them information. If my rebels still see you here, they will shoot to kill."

Ford turned as if in a trance and moved toward the door, walking with steps of lead for a distance of millions of years. His chest tightened more and more, sharp nails drowned in his heart. He opened the door and turned: Bill was still looking at him with furious anger.

His soft laughter came back to his mind, he tasted Bill’s soft kisses on his lips.

"I'm sorry," he just said, a hand on the door handle. He let his gaze fall down, put a foot over the threshold and was out.

With long, heavy steps, Ford headed toward the exit, on the surface. The other rebels were only blurred shapes, shadows on the edge of his field of vision, devoid of meaning or form. His oasis was lost, his illusion shattered into million pieces. He have stayed too long and his presence ruined everything.

He climbed the last stairs and came out on the planet’s surface. That paradoxical planet in three dimensions, inhabited by two-dimensional creatures, whose leader awakened the fire of his past love. A fire that had burned both.

He should have been happy. Finally Bill - or at least one of his versions - understood what it meant to be deceived by someone you trusted. But that thought did not make him feel any better.

Ford choked back his tears and started looking for a new portal. One step at a time, he hid again the fire of his passion under the ashes of revenge.

* * *

 

 

The door closed and, with that, Stanford Pines walked out of his life.

Bill sighed and the weight of that closed door reverberated inside him, in his arms, behind his eye. In his hands he still held that damn poster, the proof of Stanford’s lies.

He had not made excuses, nor rejected the obvious. He remained silent, confirming his every single suspicion.

And that silence made him even more furious.

In a fit of rage, Bill grabbed a bundle of documents and threw it across the room. The sheets flew and landed too softly, making no sound, stifling the chaos that roared inside him.

He grabbed a book and threw it harder, farther away, with an angry growl. The book hit the ground with a loud sound that made him feel better. He grabbed a second book and threw that too, straight through the point where Stanford had stood, standing and silent, looking at him with those fiery eyes. He had not denied. He had not lied.

Anger increased, making Bill scream. He could have lied to him! He could have told him that the one on the poster was not him! He _should_ have told him it was not him! That he was innocent! That was all an enemies’ plan!

Instead, he remained silent.

Bill screamed again, threw all the books in the middle of the room, through the silhouette that had remained of Stanford, of his sad expression, of his closed lips and fiery eyes, through the echo of his last words.

_"I'm sorry."_

_That's all?! THAT’S FUCKING ALL?!_

"YOU LIED TO ME!" he yelled at the empty room. "YOU DECEIVED ME!"

Finished the books, he started to toss away all the sheets. He threw the chairs around. He screamed from the top of his lungs while lifting them, screamed to relieve the piercing pain that tore the center of his shape.

Stanford deceived him. For Stanford, he was just a game. The umpteenth Bill Cipher to be conquered. And he had not only allowed himself to be conquered, but had granted him _EVERYTHING_!

"HOW COULD YOU DO THIS!" he punched a leg of the table, trying to throw that too on the ground: he threw himself against it, kicked it, tried to lift it, but he was small, he was weak, he was still _so_ ignorant and he was deceived by someone he thought was perfect, which had to be the soul destined for him, which had come through the stars and, by chance, had proved to be a kindred spirit...

All a game. All a lie. Everything Stanford said to him, he had repeated to hundreds of others.

Bill screamed again, kicking all the chairs, throwing them back across the room. In that very room they decided their affair would remain a secret, after a night of marvelous passion.

Shame overwhelmed him again, burning as fire. Stanford had been _very_ skilled, _too_ skilled. He thought it was because of their great affinity. He thought that Stanford just had a great intuition and that passion inspired him. But Ford knew perfectly how to touch him, because he already touched him.

_AND I LET HIM DO IT!_

"You deceived me and lied to me!" Bill screamed. "You knew me, because you already saw me! Because you ALREADY knew one of my versions! And you used that knowledge to make fun of ME!"

_AND I LET YOU DO IT!_

Anger flooded him again, blind fury that made him rip documents, pull chairs, regardless of weight or effort, aware only of the pain that burned inside his shape.

Between the scattered sheets, he tightened his grip on the poster again. He looked down at the image of Stanford: his face was smoother and younger, his brown hair without the streaks of silver, but it was him. Him, in the glasses’ shape, in the jaw line, in the curve of the nose.

_"Bring to Bill for the reward."_

They were signs different from those of their alphabet, yet everyone read the same thing. Universal language, impossible to mistake. And everyone wondered _who_ the mentioned Bill was.

But, actually, everyone already knew the answer. Who else in the Multiverse could possibly ever been called Bill?

Anger grew again, confused the letters and edges of Stanford's image, hid it all behind an opaque veil. The paper shook in his hands, a sob escaped him and Bill dug his fingers into the paper, tore it mercilessly, shouting at each new tear, reducing it to smaller and smaller pieces, until the image of Stanford disappeared in front of his eye, until nothing remained in his hands.

And then he began to lavish his anger everywhere, screaming at the void Stanford had left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯  
> You knew it would happen. Hopefully, you were not expecting in this way.


	15. Stalemate

> “ _Stalemate is a situation in chess where the player whose turn it is to move has no legal move and their king is not in check._ ”

* * *

 

"We just got a message from Fredes’ patrol, two hundred meters north from here: they saw Stanford Pines passing through a portal, that had appeared in front of him. After his passage, the portal remained open for two minutes, then closed and didn’t open again."

Myr lowered the paper and a heavy silence fell in the council room. Ephie was the first to break it, slamming a hand on the table.

"I still can’t believe it!" her voice was overflowing with incredulous rage. "We spoke alone a million of times and he gave me a lot of useful information for the theory of acceleration. We fought together and it was him who upgraded many of our weapons." she raised a finger. "He had _thousands_ of chances to hurt us. _Thousands_. A wrong formula, a badly loaded gun... heck, he could’ve just blown up an ion here and make it look like an accident!"

"I can’t believe it either, Ephie," Cotter replied, arms crossed and lowered eye. "He helped us with both scientific research and war missions. He was a key element, he knew hundreds of things." he frowned. "And now we know why."

"Stanford can’t be an enemy of the revolution!" declared Featherlight. "Ephie’s right, we fought side by side in a lot of missions! It would’ve been easy for him to kill us and pretend it was the enemies’ fault!"

"Maybe he was waiting for the right moment."

" _Stanford?!_ "

"I know, I can’t believe I’m saying that... " Cotter slammed his fist on the table. "Damn! I trusted him!"

"We all trusted him," said Leder, her voice weary. "And maybe that's why he became a wanted man. We gave him too much confidence and he made the revolution fail. Or he killed some of us."

"It seems _so crazy_ ," Myr emphasized the last two words. "We fought and shared our plans with someone who was _that_ dangerous?"

"I would’ve never considered him capable of doing something horrible," agreed Willar. "He was such a gentle and discreet creature, with great courage on the battlefield..."

"Exactly, that's why it seems impossible to me!" added Featherlight.

"The poster was very clear," explained Cotter. "There was a bounty on Stanford's head and, whoever found him, had to get him to Bill to collect the reward." he rubbed over his eye. "If that Bill came to put a price on his head and made him a wanted man throughout the Multiverse, that means Stanford must have done something atrocious."

"It seems so absurd..."

"That explains why Stanford immediately recognized Bill, the first day he arrived." Leder turned to him. "Because he already saw him, in another Dimension."

Besides her, other gazes leaned on Bill, then turned away to look back at the table. Patches of dark wood were more visible, left from the documents he had destroyed in his fury. The room had been cleaned, the chairs stood up again, everything went back to show a normal façade.

But Bill sat sideways, leaning against the back of the chair, his eye was focused on the edge of the table and the anger still roared in the center of his shape. That normality did not make any sense. Nothing made sense.

_"I'm sorry."_

Bill clung to the armrests, straightened up and slid down the chair to touch the ground.

"Bill?" Cotter called him. Bill went around the table and headed for the door.

"Continue without me."

In the incredulous silence, for the first time in his life, Bill left a meeting. And he could not care less.

Why stay? To hear the others repeat to themselves their ideas, again and again? To hear Ephie insist that no, there must be another reason, because Stanford had been a great ally in both battle and research? To hear the disappointment in Myr's tone, Cotter's ill-concealed anger, the disbelief in the voices of the generals?

It was impossible, they claimed. Stanford had been a precious element, he collaborated and gave them the best ideas! He had killed the Circles and their allies, shown sympathy for their revolution and reiterated several times that it was a righteous cause.

But then… if he had not become a wanted man for betraying the revolution, what had he done that was so horrible, to lead Bill himself to put a bounty on his head?

Bill stopped and looked up. Wandering through the base, his feet had led him to a familiar door. He opened it.

In Stanford’s room only the straw bed was still there, with the blanket folded over it. The ion guns were gone, just as his jacket, scarf and _he_ was not there anymore, sitting with his back against the wall.

Bill closed the door and slid to the floor. He put his arms on the raised knees, looking at the bed and the empty wall from behind his shelter. He had run into that room countless times, with passion that gave a spring in his steps, looking forward the moment to open the door and find Stanford waiting for him. He had laid on that blanket, talking with him about constellations and laws of gravity. In that room he had abandoned all shame, by staying naked in his arms and rubbing against his warm body.

He felt pain piercing him again. His whole shape quivered, agonizing with desire. He still wanted his kisses of fire, he wanted to feel Stanford's tongue on himself, he wanted his hands to touch him. And that need choked him, took his breath away, made him gasp.

Everyone believed that the reason for the bounty was linked to the revolution. By reading the poster, it was the first idea that everyone got. Yet, they kept thinking about it and asking themselves questions: it was too strange that the kind, brave Stanford, actually supported a tyrannical regime like that of the Circles. That contradicted his intelligence, his strange appearance, his way of behaving.

And they were right to doubt. After all, they would not have been the leaders of the revolution, if they had simply accepted the idea with all its flaws.

Bill knew that Stanford was not on the Circles side. He knew that Ford must have fought in other parallel Dimensions too, that hated tyrannical regimes and desired equality. And Bill knew that the cause of his flight was another, one that the others could never discover.

Because nobody knew about the secret relationship between them.

He remembered of when he was standing again in the council room, with the poster in his hands. As soon as his eye had settled on that image, as soon as he had read his own name on it, he had made all the connections.

Ford had already had an affair with another Bill, the Bill who had put the bounty on his head. They became lovers, Ford made him discover the same wonderful feelings he had felt and the other Bill became madly infatuated. But, just as Bill realized that past relationship, the Bill before him must have discovered an earlier one, with _another_ previous Bill, from _another_ Dimension.

And that discovery drove him insane with rage.

_"I'm sorry."_

He had hoped Ford to deny. To contradict his intuitions, as it happened when they talked about science. But he had not done it and his silence had confirmed everything. Their relationship was a lie.

Pain intensified again, turning like a knife stuck in the center of his shape. The image of Stanford, standing in front of him, in silence, clashed with the warmth of the kiss he had given him that very morning, before Bill went out to go to the meeting.

Had all the other Bill fallen into his arms as easily as he had?

Shame overwhelmed him and Bill pulled his legs closer. Only the night before, he had climbed on Ford and run his hands everywhere on him, caressing his chest, arms, neck and face, chasing his own hands with his mouth to cover the human with kisses. Stanford had held him close, bent over to kiss him. He had grabbed a part of the bow tie between his teeth and pulled: the knot had loosened, the fabric had fallen between them and Bill had pulled Ford’s head back on his shape, to kiss him in the new spot. Until a year ago, he would have never imagined doing something like this with someone else: getting undressed, touched, kissed, licked, even _colored_ from another creature he just met.

But those kisses were pure ecstasy, they were fire and delight, they were a thousand new sensations that had made him more alive than ever. Ford was his kindred soul, his words were honey. And they were all lies.

Despite that, his shape still wanted him.

And Bill hated it for its weakness.

* * *

 

Ephie seated at the end of the table, away from the group of Lines and Squares that were talking. Her dinner was still intact, the steaming plate moved to the side to make room for a bundle of papers she had placed in front of her. She wrote quickly and meticulously, her eye focused on the work, ignoring everything that surrounded her.

Bill sat down in front of her. Ephie did not even look up: when she was that immersed in the study, the rest of the world paled into insignificance and even her will to chat vanished. Ideal, at that moment, when the main argument concerned the disappearance of Stanford Pines. He did not have the slightest desire to chat with anyone, either.

The sheet was gradually filled up over the course of the dinner, rows on lines that followed each other with her small and scrupulous writing. When she was more than halfway through the sheet, Ephie stopped, put her pen down and sighed.

"This, too, is correct." she looked up: her eye looked tired, the eyelid heavy with exhaustion. She turned the sheet toward him. "Check it too."

Bill looked down at the paper, glad to escape other conversations. That was one of the formulas Stanford had given her, turned and resolved in five different ways. In all five ways, the result remained the same.

"I've checked every single formula Ford passed on to us," said Ephie. Out of the corner of his eye, Bill saw her massaging her eyelid. "To see if there were any mistakes. Well there's not even one. No passage fails, no number is wrong. If I change one detail, the equation falls or no longer matches the physical laws."

Bill reached the end of the calculation and pushed the sheet back towards her.

"It's correct," he answered, his tone flat.

Ephie looked at him, her shoulders relaxed.

"Sorry," she said, "Everyone’s always talking about him and you're already suffering so much..."

Bill straightened up, a rush of shame freeze him.

"What do you mean?"

Ephie rolled her eye.

"Come on, Bill, I'm your best friend." she leaned across the table. "There’s no need to pretend to be an aloof leader unaffected by events, when you’re with me. I know you two were close. You got along from the very start and you were always on the same page. Do you remember that time, when he explained us the time rewind? It started as a lesson, then became a conversation between you two, when you exchanged ideas about the temporal motion all evening." she gave him a sad smile. "Finally you’d found someone up to your intelligence."

"Don’t say it as if you’re not up too."

"In fact, I am not," she replied, "None of us is. But he was, that’s why you were so close." Ephie grabbed his hand. "I didn’t want you to face him alone, because I knew you would suffer."

Bill looked down at her black hand, moved his own away.

"I did my duty."

"I know." Ephie took up her paper again. "And I thank you for that. But I wanted to be by your side while you confronted him."

_No you couldn’t. Because Stanford wasn’t just a kindred soul or a friend. He was my lover. He was meant for me._

_Or so I thought._

* * *

 

Night fell, bringing cold and dim light. Bill sat on the floor, his back against the door, looking at Stanford's empty bed. The human had left only a ghost behind him, a ghost that was cooling more and more every day.

_You lied to me._

Ford’s ghost did not speak or move. He remained there, lying on his side, looking at him with those warm eyes. The same way he had looked at him in their last morning, when Bill got up to get dressed. Aware of that look, Bill had let himself be admired, turning the fabric of the bow tie in his hands and around the back, before tying it. Ford had smiled, took a hand in his big one and kissed it.

That kiss was not unique and special, those looks were not meant just for him. They were looks that he had already gave to other Bill, they were kisses he had already given to other versions of himself. He was nothing but another conquest.

_"You're beautiful."_

He liked him, just as he liked any other Bill. He was not special or different. He was just another Bill.

His own ghost laughed, while Ford covered Bill’s arm with his lips and put a hand on his back. He pulled Bill nearer, Bill clung to his shoulders and leaned, his eyelids already becoming demanding lips.

Ford bent over to kiss him and, from his lips, he went over again to cover his naked shape with kisses, making him sigh. In every kiss he put passion, in every kiss there was fire.

Those kisses were just a fiction.

Bill pulled his legs towards his shape and leaned his arms on them. He remembered the Stanford from the first days, always so distant and with a melancholy gaze. Silent and intriguing, just beyond his reach, but close enough to keep teasing his curiosity. Was that a tactic too, a plan to get and keep his interest? Was that also a lie?

_“We were destined to meet.”_

Was all part of a plan?

Pain pulsed in the center of his shape, mingling with the pathetic desire that still groaned inside him, the acute need of his kisses. Why doing this to him, why making him know all that range of new sensations, if that meant suffering and languishing as soon as they parted? Was it another cruel way designed by Stanford to laugh at him behind his back?

The ghost of Ford kept kissing him everywhere, making fun of him too.

_That's why those lips knew me so well._

He would have laughed, if he had the strength. Instead he wrapped his arms around the shape and sat there, far away, watching the ghost of their relationship mocking his ignorance.

* * *

 

"Want some?"

Bill looked up from the sheets he had in front of him: Kryptos had appeared near his table and was holding out a cup of tea.

He accepted it and, with one hand, pushed aside all the documents he was pretending to read. The room was emptying, the dinner over. The last few rebels were chatting and minding their own business. Even Myr had left him alone for the evening. Apparently, taking some papers and pretending to work was enough to keep people away.

Great. He did not want to talk to anyone. Ephie was too much sympathetic, Myr too disappointed, Cotter and Leder too ready to move on, while Ander was the last one Bill did even want to see.

Kryptos sat next to him, leaned his elbows on the table and fiddled with the edge of one of his papers. His eye slipped distractedly over the pages, reading here and there.

The tea was hot in his hands and Bill took a sip. Kryptos did not even look at him and the silence between them was interrupted just by his fiddling with the paper, which made the atmosphere lighter. It was not necessary to speak, because Kryptos was there and was not there.

Bill put the cup back on the saucer.

"What are you doing, Kryptos?"

The Square jumped, taken aback by surprise. He turned his eyes away from the paper and looked at him.

"I just wanted to read..."

"You know what I mean," he replied.

Kryptos rubbed his eye, embarassed.

"You don’t want to talk to anyone, so I'll humor you and make sure others don’t come here to bother," he replied in a low voice. "If they see me here, they'll think we're working and won’t approach."

Bill stared into his eye: Kryptos' pupil was wide and innocent, his strange, detached mouth quivering, like a child caught by parents with his hands in the cookie jar. He was an adult who behaved as if he were still a boy, but he had an ability to look and understand that not even Ander, with all his years, could match.

"Am... am I disturbing you?" Kryptos started to stand up, even more embarrassed. "I didn’t want to, I thought I was doing you a favor. Heck, sorry, it's ... it's all my fault, I'm leaving right away."

"You can stay." Bill raised the teacup. "Until I finish my tea."

"Oh ... " Kryptos stopped and slowly sat back. "Okay..."

Bill took another sip. The rustle of sheets lightened the heavy silence, filled it without needing to speak. Kryptos stopped being another Shape that required his presence and became a figure, as innocuous and impassive as the documents, that did not need to hear him speak or see him happy.

The pain in the center of his shape diminished, just a little. Neither Ephie's words, nor as the days went by, nor the time spent in Ford's room to see the ghost of their relationship unfold before him had had an effect in helping him. Instead, Kryptos with a tea and just by standing there and looking at his papers, managed to make him feel a little lighter.

It was really absurd how that Square was mediocre in science and expert in understanding others.

_He couldn’t find worse companions than us._

It was funny and Bill would have gladly burst into a laughter. Just, he was not sure how it would degenerate, so he preferred to sit in silence.

When he finished his tea, Bill put the cup back on the saucer. Kryptos still had his eye on the pages and had given no sign of hearing the noise.

He pushed the cup toward him.

"Oh?" Kryptos raised his eye, saw the cup and took it in his hands. "Do you want some more?"

"That’s enough, for tonight."

"Okay." Kryptos looked at the sheets. "Would you like me to take them back to the council room?”

"They’re Ephie’s papers," confessed Bill.

"I know, it's her field of research," admitted Kryptos, with a shy smile. "I’ll leave them in her place, so she won’t see you took them." he put the sheets under his arm. "You can go, in the meantime."

Bill looked at him.

"How do you do that?"

Kryptos chuckled.

"You'll probably think I'm kidding you," he joked. "But I saw it written all over your eye for hours. It's not so obvious, but it's normal, because memories need time to quiet down." he gave him a friendly smile. "If you don’t want to stay here for dinner, you don’t have to: if you prefer to stay somewhere else, go there. You're the boss, you can do whatever you want."

He picked up the last sheets, tapped them on the table to align with the others and put them under his arm again. With the right hand he took the empty cup and started to move away.

"Kryptos... " Bill called him back.

The Square turned.

"How much you know about?"

"Eh?" Kryptos blinked, perplexed. "Uhm... about what?"

His eye was still wide and innocent like a child's, no spark of understanding gleamed at the bottom of his clear pupil. He did not have the light of awareness that was in Ander's eye, when Bill found out that the old Shape knew about his secret relationship.

"Is... is it a trick question?" Kryptos asked again, giving him a nervous giggle, while shifting his weight from one foot to the other. "Because I'm not good with those, you know ... "

"It's nothing, I'm just tired." Bill stood up. "Thanks for the tea."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Someone who shows duplicity is two-faced — maybe showing one side in public and another in private — or is just a liar, saying something known to be untrue or misleading. A fraud uses duplicity to gain something with false promises, and someone described as “fake” might use duplicity just to fit in or be accepted.“
> 
> And now, my dear, you can understand WHY I chose "Duplicity" as title for the fiction.


	16. Combination

 

> _"Combination is a sequence of moves, including forced moves, and often involving a sacrifice, to gain an advantage.”_

* * *

 

"No news and nothing changed." Myr sat down and threw his report on the table. His expression was grim and downcast, a mirror of all the other expressions around the table.

"Is the expedition always confirmed?"

"Yes... until proven otherwise."

"Or unless they knew."

"Shut up, Stanford would never betray us!"

"We all trusted him."

"What if he had given information to the enemy?"

"It's not like that, we know for sure..."

Bill sank even further into his chair. Meetings had become monotonous and senseless. All the conversations had become senseless. He wasted his time there, listening to hollow speeches, when he could sit in Stanford’s empty room to see his ghost mock him.

And this was, paradoxically, better.

"We still have weapons."

"But we’re going slowly with upgrades."

"We have not enough experts, we need more."

"Good fighters..."

"Good scientists..."

"Listen up."

Ander's voice rose high and clear in the council room, silencing all other voices, questions, requests. All the captains and generals looked at the end of the table: the Triangle stood on his chair, bright in his warm orange.

"The disappearance of Stanford Pines has been hard on all of us," he said, his voice firm. His eye rested on every single creature inside the room. "But we must move on. We’ve lost a great fighter, but how many times we’ve lost expert scientists and generals during the battles? Those were important, significant losses, but they didn’t stop us. The Circles’ mercenaries killed dozens of our comrades, brought  us on our knees more than once. Remember that we thought the revolution would end and we would lose?

“Well, we didn’t lose that time and we won’t lose _now_. We’re still strong, skillful, brave. Our rebels are more determined than ever, we have powered weapons we didn’t have before. But, above all, we have an information that takes us a thousand steps ahead of the enemy."

Ander pressed both hands on the table.

"We know about the expedition of Turlan Wehls. We gathered enough details to be 90% sure that the information is correct. We can surround, assault and kill the Chief Circle himself, the leader of our enemies. We have weapons, we have brave fighters, we have a plan. Not only we can continue this revolution, but turn the tides of the war to our advantage, overpowering the tyrants. For the first time, after years and years, _we_ can be the strongest ones."

He raised a hand towards Myr.

"How many upgrades do we have?"

"Enough for 70% of the entire base," he replied. Ander moved his hand towards the generals.

"And how many available fighters do we have?"

"Everyone is ready to take part in the attack against Wehls," Featherlight replied. "We just have to choose the best ones."

"So why don’t we start doing it?" said Ander, with urgent voice. "Wehls's expedition will be in a week! We have to refine the plan! Choose the best rebels! We have lots of work to do!"

"I will choose ten of the best bird-beings!" Featherlight replied, pushed by the energy in Ander's tone.

"The ten best Semiliquids will take part," added Willar. "Count me in, too."

"There’ll also be ten Women!" jumped Ephie, raising an arm.

"They’re too many!"

"They're _necessary_!"

"What about James and Hatteras? Are they leaving everything to us or will they participate?"

"Didn’t they send any messenger?"

"We’ll immediately send one!"

"All those who need to upgrade their weapons, must do it instantly!" pressed Ander. "Those weapons needs to be already upgraded, we can’t leave them for last! And where’s the patrol that was supposed to check Wehls’ route?"

"Someone had to go…"

"We didn’t send anyone?"

"I’ll send two Shapes," said Leder.

"Come on, then!" Ander clapped his hands. "Let's get to work all together and change the course of this war!"

Animated by the old Shapes’s words, everyone began to talk with new energy, to argue, to make decisions, to choose.

Bill looked and nothing still made any sense.

* * *

 

In Stanford’s empty room, his ghost kept smiling. He kissed Bill’s shadow and smiled at him, the real one, sitting against the door, looking at them.

Stanford’s smile had edges that were more and more sharper, as if every second that Bill spent watching them, would increase his enjoyment. It was _so fun_ to mock him. Poor, little naive Bill. Did you really think you were so unique and special? Did you really think you were a key piece in the chessboard?

No, obviously he was not. He was not the chess Queen, but a simple pawn for Ford. He was used as long as needed, protected from enemy attacks, centered as if he were a fundamental piece. But, at the end of the day, he was nothing but an insipid pawn, like all the rest of them.

Anger stirred at the center of his shape, mingling with the scream of his denied desire. Where was Ford at that moment? In which Dimension was he? Was he once again in a magical utopian world, with artificial elements and scientists everywhere? Or had he already found another Bill to win over and was starting the cycle again, totally oblivious of him?

The mere thought made him tremble from top to toes. Did Ford really forget all those moments they had spent together? Did _nothing_ really matter to him? When they had looked at the stars together, lying on the grass, and Ford had given him fleeting kisses, sheltered from prying eyes. That first time in the infirmary, when Bill had climbed on him and, holding Bill in his hands, Ford had poured fire into his shape. When Bill had shown him color and allowed the human to cover him with precious paint. Had Ford already filed all those memories? Had he already moved on? Was everything already in the past?

He looked up at Ford’s ghost, addressing that silent question. The ghost, quiet as always, just looked at him with his warm and melancholy eyes. Again, Bill was attracted, like a needle on the compass. Again, the pleasure languished in him, unheard, abandoned.

Stanford could not treat him like that. How _dare_ he treat him like that? How _dare_ he lie to him, abandon him, forget about him, yet continue to attract him?

Stanford just smiled.

_"I'm sorry."_

Ford's last words repeated in his mind. These were not the words that Bill wanted to hear. Ford should have told him that it was all fake, that Bill was important for him, that he would remain forever at his side, faithful Rook at the service of the Queen.

But Ford escaped the chessboard and Bill was not his Queen.

* * *

 

The council room overflowed with creatures, their voices overlapping in useless speeches. A messenger from James had arrived, bringing information about Wehls' route: everyone was excited, everyone was animated, everyone asked questions as if it were something fundamental.

Lying against the chair, Bill looked at the map spread on the table, the route marked by red pins. Two weeks earlier, that route was the most important thing in the world. Now it had no meaning anymore, just like everything else.

Everyone was talking, but it was not important to listen. It was not important to even look at them, not even to follow the speech. It was no use being a Queen, if in a much larger Multiverse, he was just a small Triangle, fighting a small war against small enemies. Beyond their borders, there were bigger things, there were different worlds, there was Stanford Pines somewhere, fleeing from him.

"Bill...?"

The sound of his own name tore him from his thoughts and made Bill look up. Ander was staring at him with burning eye, anger held in the pupil. Bill relaxed against the back of the chair.

"What?"

Ander gave him a look even more stern, as if he were a child again.

"The route," he said, as if he had repeated the same question three times. "Should we attack two or three hundred meters from the start? What do you think about it?"

_That's all?_

He held back a snort. Two hundred meters, three hundred meters, what changed? It was a stupid piece of road, against a small enemy. In the worlds Stanford described to him, someone like the Chief Circle would have been crushed in two seconds: there, instead, he became an enormous danger that was hard to defeat.

No wonder Stanford had made fun of him: Bill was too small to hurt him, too weak to resist the passion. He could not get rid of a stupid Circle, leat alone Ford.

"I don’t know," said Bill, lying again against the chair, "Do as you wish."

Ander's gaze hardened, but the others took advantage to make additions, shout suggestions, get up and act, all happy and perky, as if talking about that stupid route made sense, as if the whole world still had sense, now that Stanford had left.

The shape hurt, pierced in equal measure by anger and need. Nobody could see how stupid it was to worry about those little things, when there was the gigantic void that Ford had left behind.

He wanted to leave. He wanted to go back to the empty room, to look at Stanford's shadow. He hated coming back to the empty room. He hated that his feet always led him there. He hated to hear everyone speak as if Stanford had never existed.

"Bill."

A hand was shaking him. Bill batted his eyelashes and roused from his thoughts: the council room was emptying, generals and Shapes heading towards the exit, still chatting about the same arguments. The only one left at the table, besides him, was Ander, who still had one hand on his arm.

Bill shook off the old man's hand and started to get out of the chair.

"Stay here." Ander grabbed his wrist. "We need to talk."

Bill tried again to wriggle free. Ander's eye was sharper than ever, it was a beacon aimed at him, peering into the back of his mind and revealing all his thoughts. He did not need to hear his sermons, nor the complaints made with that paternal pedantic tone. His father had been dead for years, he did not need another one.

"I have something to do," Bill cut short.

"Falling apart isn’t the same as doing something," Ander replied. The door closed, leaving them alone, and the old Shape raised his voice. "You need to pull yourself together, Bill. We are at an historic turning point and rebels need you. The whole revolution needs you."

Bill yanked his arm, freeing himself again from Ander's grip. Epochal turn? _That_? It was nothing but a small attack against a small enemy. Nothing, compared to the turn that Stanford had been in their lives.

"We’re talking about the Chief Circle himself," Ander insisted, as if his words made sense in the grand plan of the Multiverse, “The leader of our enemies. It was him, in the early days, to make propaganda against us and to discredit us to the eye of other Shapes. It was by his order that Hatteras and Myr ended up in jail. It’s because of Wehls, that this war is still going on! It’s him who hires mercenaries who kill our rebels!"

Ander forced Bill to turn toward him: his eye was shining, animated by the fire of the battle.

"Goddamn, Bill, have you forgotten all he did to us?" he said. "If we have to fight every day and we can’t spend our time studying, it's _his_ fault! This attack will change our lives!"

"Don’t pretend to be so naive, Ander." Bill took a step back, escaping from the old Shape’s hands. "The war won’t end with this attack."

"No, but many things will change. It’s a moment we’ve waited for years," he insisted. "We knew that, sooner or later, he would show himself. So we waited, and waited, and waited. Now our patience has been rewarded and you want to give up everything, just because you feel _hurt_?"

Bll crossed his arms and looked the other way.

"It's not good for you to let yourself go like that," he continued, "It’s been a few days you don’t eat: you don’t even show up anymore, for dinner. You don’t sleep at night. You’re brooding over the same thoughts. If you keep going that way, you’ll destroy yourself."

Bill tightened his grip on his own arms. Ander spoke as if it were easy, as if Stanford had not changed his life. He had put his thought behind him: Stanford was gone, so it was much more important to think of a _stupid_ route and decide if it was better to attack two hundred meters from the start or two hundred and two or whatever!

"You need to eat, rest and think about something else," said Ander. "You need to talk to other Shapes and rebels. It’s not like you to isolate yourself and be depressed. The others are worried and desponent: they never see you, you’re the shadow of your former self and you’re not like that."

"What do you know?" asked Bill, gloomy. "Maybe I've always been like that. And you don’t know me enough."

"I've known you since you were born and I know what I say," he replied. "That’s why I don’t accept to see you falling apart like that, just because of _him._ "

Bill turned and stared at the old Triangle.

"Don’t even say his name."

"On the contrary, I’ll do it," he replied. "I know you hate to hear that, but I warned you, Bill. I told you to control yourself. I told you from the first time, months and months ago."

"Shut up."

"You remember, don’t you?" he continued, as if Bill had not spoken. "Do you remember when I told you to stop? To not get too close to him? And I told you the same three weeks ago: _don’t. Be. Too. Familiar. With. Him_. But no, stubborn as ever, you didn’t want to hear reasons and you kept doing what you wanted."

Ander spread his arms.

"And here's the result: instead of thinking about the battle, now you think of _him."_

Bill shivered with rage.

"Stop that."

Ander sighed and rubbed his eye.

"I knew it, I _knew_ he was hiding something. There was something about him, from the beginning. How the heck did he, a creature who has come from so far, know you? He knew absolutely nothing about us, but he knew _you_. And he spent all the time running around you, drawing your attention with those cheap tricks... " he snorted. " _The Queen_. A compliment made just to get noticed by you."

The old Shape’s eye rested on him. He was stern again, an adult that surprised him to read secretly in his library. It was his father's look, that bloody strict stare that made him feel small and weak.

Even smaller and weaker than he already was.

"And you immediately indulged him," Ander went on. "The more he was running around you, the more you ran around him." he looked away. "So far as to give him _such_ confidence..."

Bill surged towards him, grabbed his arm and looked at him straight in the eye.

" _Shut up, Alexander._ "

"You were wrong, Bill, and someone has to tell you," the old Shape insisted, staring at him again with that bloody expression, without wavering, without fear, because he was older than him and he knew more and Bill was just small, small, small…

"Shut up."

"When that poster came out, I didn’t say anything to anyone to respect your privacy," he continued. "But others aren’t stupid. If you continue to be depressed like this, everyone will see that, between you and him, there wasn’t just a strong friendship. At that point, what do you think they’ll assume, knowing that a couple of compliments were enough for their leader, to make him fall for a stranger who appeared out of nowhere?"

Anger flared up, made him tremble from head to toe.

"Shut up!"

Ander continued to stare at him, calm, with that hateful stern eye, without any fear, _I can’t scare an old Shape, how could I terrify Stanford?_

"I told you to not be too friendly with him and to think only about the war, that was the most important thing. You _completely_ ignored my advice. Because you always do this. You always think you're the only one who understands things and that others are all idiots. But, this time, _I_ was right: you didn’t know _anything_ about Stanford Pines and you’ve been tricked by him."

Something broke into his shape with a dry _snap_.

"SHUT UP!"

Bill clenched his hand and punched Ander's eye, with all his strength. The old Shape staggered backwards, stumbled and hit one leg of the table with a loud _crack_.

The noise repeated in Bill's mind, dispelling his anger and making his eye widen. He lowered his hand and, trembling, took a step forward.

Ander collapsed against the leg of the table, the movement accompanied by small other _crack_. Two breaks appeared from the top and the base, in line with the table leg.

Ander let out a faint breath, blue blood dripped from his eye. The breaks widened, breaking the orange of the surface, moving towards the center. The shaking pupil rose up, looking for Bill. A hand raised, also looking for him.

Blood began to flow copiously and the two breaks met in the middle, with one last _crack_. Ander rolled his eye back and his hand fell, inert.

Bill backed away. Blood was beating furiously in all his shape, overpowering everything else, filling the room.

He turned around and ran out of the base.


	17. Draw death

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so we reached the end of this story. It’s the second fiction I publish and, once again, I’m amazed at the warm response of you all. I did not expect so many comments, nor all these interested people or their attention to every chapter. It has been a long journey and I am honored that all of you stayed with me during these months.  
> For this reason, I want to dedicate this last chapter to all of you. It’s for those who enjoyed this fiction, who waited impatiently for a new chapter, who imagined the development of this fiction or the conclusion, to those who left kudos. But above all, to all the commentators who, with their words, wanted to tell me something, express a feeling, an opinion, an idea. I loved every single comment, every sentence made my day better. A special thanks goes to the three people that followed me from the very first chapter: precious and supportive Pengychan that helped me so much, Nelja with her curious comments and continuous interest, and Megxolotl with her funny reactions and ideas that made me smile more than once.  
> Your last chapter is here, my readers. I hope you like it and that, once again, you will enjoy this small ride.

> _“In chess games, draw death is an hypothetical scenario whereby elite-level chess players will get so good that they never make mistakes, and every game from now on will end with a draw, resulting in an endless series of drawn games.”_

* * *

 

Not even rubble surrounded him anymore.

Bill continued to walk, swaying in the night wind, dust and sand made his eye burn. How long had he been walking? He had run for hours, but now he had been walking for _days_. Or weeks. Or maybe even months. He had not paid attention to the cycle day/night. All he saw, in the sand dunes, was Ander's shape slumped against the table leg.

Broken. He had broken Ander. Would it have happened, even if he had never met Stanford? Once the war was over, in the midst of peace, he and Ander would have had such a violent argument, to lead to that conclusion? Ander was against everything he did, he always had to complain and criticize his every decision.

Yes, maybe it would have happened anyway. Stanford had only accelerated things.

In the scream of the wind there was still the echo of Ander's shape breaking under his own eye.

He should not have escaped from the base. Others would have went crazy. Who knows what they would do, seeing their oldest leader, broken and alone in the council room.

_"Behave yourself, Bill."_

Ander always said it to him. When his father died, the first thing Bill did was run to the old Triangle's house. His home was occupied by the unwieldy figure of his father, the studio overflowed with his work, the kitchen trembled in his mother's echo. There was not enough space left for him.

Instead, at Ander's home, the library had welcomed him with open arms. The sofa had become the best bed in the world and study filled his day.

_"You’re going too fast."_

When he came back from work, Ander always joined him in the library and made Bill tell him everything he had read and learned during the day. One day, he had learned so much, that Ander had made him slow down during the explanation.

At that moment, he realized Ander was getting old.

The wind howled louder. Far, far away, he thought he saw lights. Shooting? An attack? Friend or foe? Or maybe another portal that opened, to bring new suffering into his life?

The sand scratched him, the eye burned, but nothing was like the dull pain that filled the center of his shape.

He just wanted something better. He just wanted to know more.

_"This rebellion will come at a high price."_

Ander had never really approved the revolution. Too many risks, too few chances of winning, too weak Shapes against powerful enemies. And all just to be able to know more, study and explore? He had spent hours trying to convince Bill to desist. They would have suffered. They would have paid. He was sure of it.

He had not been wrong.

The wind changed direction, spitting more hot sand into his eye and forcing him to slow down. Bill continued to walk, stubborn, with half-closed eye.

He did not even know where he was going. He just wanted to walk. If he stopped, Ander's image would materialize, the crack would materialize, the blood would stain his hands, his empty eye would stare at him in silence.

Ander spoke. He tested his patience, talking to him and challenging him fearlessly. During the research, he always asked the most difficult questions, he tested all his theories, forcing him to find unassailable answers. If a theory faltered or could not answer his questions, then it was not a correct theory. With his technique, they had created the fundamental theories of scientific research, theories that even Stanford had confirmed were universal.

Ander had shown him the basic ingredients in color creation. That day he had only ingredients for yellow, so he created it for him: it was just a cup, enough for Bill to pour it on his hands and see it dripping down his arms.

He looked at his arms: they were black again, while the shape had turned yellow. The first time they covered, when each of them had to choose its own color, Bill had no doubts. Once the last brushstroke had passed, he had come out from behind the curtain to show his choice and everyone had looked at him wide-eyed, enjoying the dazzling sight of yellow. Only Ander had blinked, as a sign of assent.

One knee folded down before him and Bill sank into the sand. He put his hands on the ground, trying not to fall forward. His legs hurt from the effort, another pain that added to the much bigger one that filled him.

He could go back to the base. Become the leader of the revolution, the one the rebels needed. Organize the funeral for Ander. Lead the Shapes into the battle against Wehls and win.

And then?

After victory, he would build the new world that all of them had dreamed of. Shapes would unanimously elect him as their leader, he would accept that position. He would wipe out the last enemies still loyal to the Circles, scatter the remaining mercenaries. With the last battles over, the organization would start: building new cities, splitting tasks, educating, creating laws. Years and years of constant commitment, attention and care to rebuild a whole world.

He would become the leader Ander had always wanted him to be.

He clenched his hands in fists, gripping the sand between his fingers. He just had to go back to the base and lead the rebels to victory. With Wehls’ death, no one would dare to oppose him. The rebels would love and worship him even more. Friends and enemies would bow to him. From the top of his throne, in command of the new world, he would pledge his whole life to put back in place everything that had been destroyed.

He would engage his brilliant intelligence with the small problems of everyday life. He would spend hours and hours listening to the complaints of small Shapes, who would come to talk to him: once the price of food would have been too high, another time the water would have been missing, another time bridges and buildings would have been too few. Small questions, small insignificant problems they would present to him as if they were huge, insurmountable mountains.

And he would spend days, weeks, months and years. He could not let others do his job, because no one would have been a worthy leader as he was. He could not escape his commitments, because everyone would ask his last word for everything. He would become a king chained to his throne, forced to head down, watch over a bunch of ants and solve their problems. Forced to ignore the infinite sky above his head, to postpone the study to tomorrow, always tomorrow, because every day would be occupied by small problems, small issues, small beings.

He would no longer be the Queen, fluid and able to move anywhere. He would become the King, as Ander had predicted. The chief of the new world.

No more research of knowledge. No more memories of Stanford.

He stood up and kept walking. His feet sank to the knees in the deep sand, but he still moved forward, stubborn.

Stanford had brought the knowledge. There was a gigantic, infinite multiverse out there, full of dimensions, different from each other, each with its inhabitants and physical laws. Some were very far, others one step away. Some were better, others worse. Stanford was a window, open to that sea of knowledge: Bill and all the others had looked out, had shared that vastness of knowledge, bewitched.

But now the others had pulled back, because war was more important. They had waited for years to attack Wehls and the opportunity had finally come. That was much more important than all the rest.

He, on the other hand, did not want to break away from the window. He did not want to get off the windowsill, turn his back and return to small problems, get caught up in small things, being only the leader of the revolution. He wanted to cling to the window, to break it, to overcome it, to learn, to know more.

He stepped forward and, in the storm of wind and sand, sank over his knee, halfway up his thigh. Bill planted his hands in the sand and tried to get out. Great. Damn. How long was he going on? He should have made up a story. Forty days, struggling in the desert, against the temptation of power and returning home. Maybe one day he would tell it to someone.

He managed to pull out his foot and moved forward, dragging himself into the sand on both hands and knees.

_I just wanted to know more._

_I just want to know more._

And, as if the Multiverse had listened to his request, a portal opened in front of him.

_The window._

Bill held out a hand, clung to the swirling blue light and let himself fall through.

He waited to land on the hard ground, but remained suspended in midair, floating among blue and pink clouds. Dots of white light sparkled here and there. It was like being in the sky, a sky with much softer colours than those of his world.

_What is this?_

"My place," answered a voice. It was a kind voice, coming from the clouds, from the dots of light, from everything that surrounded him. “And you? Where are you coming from?”

_I'm tired. I walked for days in the desert._

“Why?”

_Because I don’t want to come back home._

His back touched something soft. Bill opened his eye and sat up: he was on a large, soft pink surface, surrounded by high mountains that looked like... fingers?

He turned and found himself in front of a huge creature, with a broad oval face. Some appendages with thin lashes were on either side of the face, near a pair of round black eyes that looked at him. The creature had a small fold under his eyes, like a smiling mouth. The rest of the body was thin, with two other arms in addition to those that supported him, and a long pointed end.

"Why?" the creature asked him.

“E... eh?” Bill asked, dazed "What?"

"Why don’t you want to come back home?” the creature spoke without moving its mouth and its voice kept coming from all directions.

"Because I don’t want just power.” Bill lowered his eye and looked at his hands. “I want knowledge too.”

A creature’s giant finger touched his back.

"Poor, little son of the Two Dimensions," he said. "So in love with knowledge, in a world that has so little to offer."

Bill looked up again.

"Do you know my world?"

"I know all the worlds," the creature replied.

"I want to know them too," answered Bill, "I want to know everything."

"I know," he answered. "It's not the first time."

"The first time what?"

"Do you still want knowledge?" the creature replied.

Bill rose on his knees.

"Of course!" he stood up. "You know something? Tell me _everything_."

The creature moved a hand, lifted it between them and touched Bill with a finger.

"There’s no need to talk," he said. "It's not the first time."

* * *

 

He knew.

He saw in the fibers that structured the Multiverse, in the strings that composed it, in the black surface on which the universe was reflected. He heard the song of Dimensions, the chaotic voices of existences that overlapped and deviated. His touch had become the touch of all his atoms, of all his particles, and each of them was energy.

He knew.

He had seen Dimensions take shape, small surfaces that widened on the hologram of the universe, prospered, decayed and collapsed, regressing to a point and then dying out under the weight of entropy. He gathered the knowledge of every single being. He had already collected it from the future, he took it from the past. He could not extend over time forever, because he knew there was a being who controlled it.

He knew.

The Axolotl had placed a small limit: no control over time. He _always_ placed that small limit on him. He thought he was doing him a favor and believed that something would change? No, a know-it-all like him knew very well that Bill would always behave the same way. He simply had a weakness for his thirst for knowledge. And Bill understood it: it was the same for him.

He knew.

Sand moved as he passed. Or rather, _he_ bent the sand, diverting it from the path that the physical laws had established. There were no laws that could stop him now, there was nothing that could touch him anymore. He had gone beyond the concept of chess Queen. He was all the pieces and all the players. He was all the matches until the end of time.

He was pure energy, with total knowledge.

He was the yellow, he was the light and its concept, he had inspired the first life forms and would have inspired the last, until the last Dimension had gone out and the Multiverse would have turned black.

He knew _everything_.

The base cleared up for him, cracks opened in the walls as he passed. Blue blood stained the floors, fragments of abandoned weapons, pieces of coloured cloth.

Frantic steps ran in his direction and Kryptos appeared in the doorway. In his hands he held up an ion machine gun, that was swaying in his trembling grip. When he saw him, his eye widened.

"Bi... Bill!" he shouted. He dropped the weapon to the ground and came to meet him. "You’re alive!"

His shape was scratched, the color covered with lighter spots of blood. His mouth trembled, as did his legs and his eye.

"We thought you were dead!" his voice trembled too. "We found Ander in the council room and... and he was broken. You were gone. And... Ephie thought the enemies had come inside and we all searched the base from top to bottom." he shivered "Then ... then you weren’t back and nobody found you, so... so Ephie put herself in charge of the attack against the Chief Circle."

He knew.

He knew that Ephie had taken his ion guns. That the entire base had listened to her, as she spoke of the surprise attack of the enemies. That, along with the others, she had established the plan. That they had attacked Wehls on each side.

That everything had been a trap, set up by the Circles.

"The Circles had organized everything." cried Kryptos. "They deceived us... and Ephie... Leder... Ander... Cotter... James... Myr..."

He knew they had all been caught unprepared and crushed by the enemy forces. That James joined to help them and that his rebels were slaughtered. That when Ephie saw that the enemy forces were the majority, had extracted the ion from her weapon, making herself explode in the middle of the enemies. That Leder had gone mad with pain and anger, and had slaughtered as many enemies as possible, only to fall apart, broken by a Circle. That Cotter had sent Kryptos away in an extreme attempt to save him, only to be struck from behind. That James had preferred to break himself, rather than end up in the enemy's hands. That Myr had tried to lead the last remaining rebels to the end, only to be broken by a spear that had shattered him.

"W... we dispersed," he continued. "I don’t know where the others are... some died while we were back... I... I tried to heal as much rebels as possible, but I had nothing and I couldn’t contact anyone..." he rubbed his eye. "What do we do now, Bill?"

Bill raised a hand and blue fire wrapped his fingers. It was fascinating, it was his power, and Kryptos stared at it, hypnotized, his eye wet.

"This world has never had a chance," Bill replied. Kryptos looked at him, confused and still shocked.

There were small groups of rebels, scattered north and west. There was the biggest group led by Hatteras, who still had no idea what had happened. There were single rebels trying to reach the base, to tell him about the attack. Another rebel was dying, two hundred kilometers from there.

That world would never have had a chance.

"Bill?" Kryptos called him, in a weak voice. "Wh... what happened to you?"

Bill looked at him. The eye of the Square was still wide, the pupil lightened by the blue of the flame that burned in his fingers. He looked at Bill with adoration, as if he were the sun, as if he were the only light of the Multiverse.

And he was.

"Come with me," he said, "I’ll take you out of this doomed world and show you the vastness of the Multiverse."

Kryptos still stared at him wide-eyed, as if he had not understood a single word. Fear, loneliness and pain of the losses had exhausted him and knocked him down. Nothing would ever return as before, Kryptos would never hold weapons again and Bill knew it.

He knew how the events would be solved, because he had seen them unfold in the future.

Bill held out his fiery hand, waiting. Among the ruins of the destroyed base and the doomed world, Kryptos looked at that flame: the soldier's fear filled his eye, but at the center of the black pupil shone the curious little light of the scholar.

Although he had never been a science expert, Kryptos was still one of them. And a Shape with his potential would never perish in that world.

Kryptos put his fingers in the blue flames and shook his hand.

* * *

 

Universes sang, pulled by the strings of existence. Millennia of knowledge flowed before his eye, just by looking at the Dimensions he passed. Creatures would be born and were already dead, past and future coexisted together.

How blind he had been! How had been limited, his sight, forced into that boring, flat world! Now his knowledge was equaled by few others in the Multiverse. He knew everything.

And Stanford knew _nothing_.

The flaws in his human thought were evident, now that he saw how his species thought. Now that he knew they were nothing but evolved monkeys, that they had to slam atoms together to figure out what they were like inside. Stanford was just as limited. So arrogant and focused on his little world, that he had not thought about the possibility that a different timeline could exist, with a different Bill.

In a universe that was as wide as a _googleplex_ , all the possible recombinations of matter would end long before the limit of the Universe and, traveling far enough, they would begin to repeat. A creature, traveling far enough away, would end up meeting an exact recombination of itself.

But the Multiverse was not so small, it was trillion times bigger than a _googleplex_. Yet it was finished too and, traveling far enough, even in the Multiverse, identical Dimensions would appear again. A creature would end up finding itself in a Dimension identical to its own, in which an identical copy of itself would have lived. A copy that, however physically identical, would have had a different past and future, placed on a separate timeline. And he was exactly _that_.

But, as matter had been able to arrange into his Shape, it could arrange into other shapes. It could give life to other creatures, already existing in other timelines. Copies that would have existed in _his_ timeline.

The Stanford he had known was not the one for him. Because in his Universe, on his own timeline, _his_ Stanford existed. He was not born yet, but he was waiting for him in the future. He would have been the umpteenth, in the long list of scientists who would invoke Bill, looking for help. He was his key to gain complete access to the Third Dimension and to the temporal power the Axolotl denied him.

In the depths of his shape, behind the veil of immortality that covered him, anger burst into a laughter. Followed by Kryptos, Bill moved along space. He knew that the time to meet his Stanford would arrive. He knew he would meet many other beings, fight against Time Baby, meet new friends, visit thousands worlds. Until Stanford's homeworld would have been formed, the first atoms would aggregate into life and the first human creatures would born, evolving from apes. He would follow them in their development, stimulate their minds, give them knowledge, try to convince them to build his portal. Until the day would come, when he would meet Stanford.

And, that day, he would finally take his revenge.

* * *

 

All he had to do was lean against a tree trunk and close his eyes and Stanford felt himself projected instantly into sleep. His body floated weightlessly, between blue patterns and stars, until he felt gravity pull him again and his feet touched a blue floor.

In front of him, his Journals and ancient scrolls floated in midair. He held out a hand and grabbed the nearest one: it was covered with Sanskrit signs, accompanied by an image of the invocation circle he had found in the cave, the one that allowed him to call the Being with Answers. The same circle that had proved useless.

"Hiya, smart guy!"

Stanford jumped in surprise and turned, facing the most incredible creature he could ever imagine.

It was a golden triangle, with only one eye in the center of the shape. He wore a top hat and a bow tie, as black as his arms and legs. The creature floated in midair and a hand was raised in greeting.

"Don’t have an heart attack, you're not 92 yet!" joked the creature. His golden surface shone louder as he spoke. Stanford gasped: could _that_ be the Being with Answers?!

He had a cheerful and nasal voice, too high. And he was much smaller than expected: in the cave paintings he was a gigantic creature, but the one in front of him could have been as big as a cat. And he did not even look so omniscient, to be honest.

"But... but who are you?" he asked.

The creature came closer, staring straight at him. Though he had only one eye, that triangle had a very intense gaze. Ford felt suffocated and leaned back.

"I'm Bill!" replied the creature, still with that cheerful tone, in contrast with the depth of his gaze. "And you’re Stanford Pines, the man who will change the world!"

Bill circled him once more and Stanford tried to follow him with his eyes: he just spun on himself, like a confused child. He still felt a little puzzled, actually.

"You know me?"

The creature stopped. He was still staring at him.

"Since before you were born, Stanford," he replied, his tone suddenly serious. His black pupil was a pit, an abyss in which Ford could not see the light. It was as if invisible hands closed around his throat and held him tight. Ford felt the need to look away, to escape the eye. Maybe it was an instinctive fear, given by being in front of a creature much more powerful than him?

"But let’s not go ahead of ourselves!" Bill broke the silence again, returning to his cheerful and jovial tone, with such speed to leave him disoriented. Stanford just had time to beat his eyelashes, that a table appeared between them and the scientist found himself seated in a blue velvet chair. He looked down and, in a fragment of a second, blue chess appeared on the table.

Bill sat down in front of him. In his hands he held a Queen and his eye was narrowed. In the dark abyss of the pupil a flame of challenge lit.

"Care for a game of interdimensional chess?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I know. I can already hear your questions:  
> \- But what does this mean?  
> It means that it is all repeating. The relationship between Bill and Ford is a continuous loop. Bill betrays Ford -> Ford can go to the Multiverse and meet another Bill -> Ford "betrays" Bill -> Bill gets supernatural powers that allow him to meet Ford and betray him. For this reason the title is "draw death": from the betrayal, they are no longer pawns of the game, but they are the players, they are the game. Each of their meetings, their every relationship ends in a draw: Bill never manages to get his global Weirdmageddon, Ford never manages to kill Bill. Nobody wins, nobody loses. It is an eternal tie. A cycle that includes all the Bill and all the Ford of the Multiverse.  
> And this is why we can not have nice things with this couple. But it is also why this couple is so awesome.
> 
> -And what about the Axolotl?!?!  
> Well, that's part of my mindcanon. When he says "It's not the first time" means that he has already met a Bill, that they have already spoken.  
> But it is long to explain. Oh, if only there was a system (like paper and pen but with a computer) to express my ideas in the form of a story and if only there was a site (like… this one) which allows me to show my ideas to all of you so you can read them...!
> 
> Oooh yes, my dearest readers. That is exactly what you think.  
> 


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